Sumner Ellis 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

TbX 9969 

ShelfJL.fo.A3 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



: ^ e being tieatJ get speaftetf) " 



Faith and righteousness 



a premortal 



SUMNER ELLIS, D.D. 



WITH AN OUTLINE OF HIS LIFE AND MINISTRY 

By REV. C. R. MOOR 



2wdUL* 




BOSTON 
UNIVERSALIST PUBLISHING HOUSE 
1887 




Copyright, 1887, 
By Universalist Publishing House. 



©mfcerstta ^rcss : 
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge. 



PREFACE. 



HE sermons contained in this volume 
are selected from those written by 
Dr. ELLIS in the more recent years 
of his ministry, and are printed with only the 
changes necessary to avoid the repetition 
usual in sermons written at widely separated 
intervals and for various congregations. 
Three, — " The Universal Intuition," " The 
Christ Consciousness," and " Faith con- 
firmed by Progress," — were included in a 
series entitled " The Grounds of Faith," de- 
livered in Chicago in 1882 ; and the last in 
the volume, " Religion the Vital Bond," is 
that with which he ended his earthly ministry 
in St. Paul's Church, July 13, 1884. 

In view of the responsibility which attaches 
to the publication after the author's death of 




iv Preface. 

sermons not written for that purpose, it is 
perhaps needless to remark that the selection 
has been made with all possible care. It is 
believed that those now printed represent the 
best thought of Dr. Ellis, and are good exam- 
ples of his fine literary expression. They 
exhibit not only his clear thinking on some 
of the highest themes of the pulpit, but also 
his artistic perception, his classical sympa- 
thies, his positive delight in all forms of 
exalted moral sentiment, his rare insight and 
poetic sensibility, and more than all his pro- 
found Christian faith and devout spirit If 
character may be read (as we are assured) — 

" In those fallen leaves which kept their green, 
The noble letters of the dead," 

his friends may naturally expect in these ser- 
mons of Sumner Ellis — so rich in thought, 
exalted in sentiment, and refined in expres- 
sion — much of that which was best and 
highest in himself ; and from their study 
others may also learn the secret of his per- 
sonal influence, understand something of his 
peculiar genius as a preacher, and find an 



Preface. v 

explanation of the attachment which was felt 
for him as a pastor and a friend. 

It remains to add that the biographical 
portion of the volume has been prepared by 
Dr. Ellis's intimate friend and associate in the 
ministry, the Rev. C. R. Moor, as an appropri- 
ate introduction to the sermons. The volume 
is published in the conviction that it will be 
received with gratitude by the Church as a 
memorial of one widely beloved and honored 
as a faithful minister of the Lord Jesus Christ, 
and a cultivated preacher of that Faith and 
Righteousness which the sermons so finely 
set forth. 

J. S. CANTWELL. 

Chicago, December, 1886. 



CONTENTS. 



Page 

Memorial by the Rev. C. R. Moor ... 9 

L The Universal Intuition .... 89 

II. The Incarnation a Necessity. . . 105 

III. The Christ Consciousness . . . .123 

IV. The Fallacy of Disbelief .... 141 
V. Inferences based on Gift and Growth 159 

VI. Faith confirmed by Progress . . . 176 

VII. Righteousness 195 

VIII. The Law of Service 213 

IX. Current Tendencies in Thought and 

Life 235 

X. The Law of the Christian Spirit . 255 

XI. The Song of Mercy and Judgment 273 

XII. The Fulfilling Principle .... 293 

XIII. Religion the Vital Bond . . . . 3 11 



Memorial of Sumner Ellis. 



UMNER ELLIS was born in North 
Orange, Massachusetts, on the 17th 
of May, 1828. His father's name 
was Seth, and his mothers Susanna Cheney. 
He was the youngest of ten children, three 
of whom died when less than two years old ; 
the others all became worthy heads of fami- 
lies, and three — Caroline, Edwin, and Joseph 
Warren — are yet living. His parents, grand- 
parents, and great-grandparents were farmers 
and farmers' wives, industrious and rigidly 
upright in conduct. 

Sumner was neither born nor reared in 
an atmosphere of culture. His early school 
advantages were comprised in eight or ten 
weeks a year ; later, when his time for school- 
ing was made exceptional in the town, it was 




io Sumner Ellis. 

extended a few weeks; but all these advan- 
tages were only such as the district school- 
system afforded as it was about fifty years 
ago, in the then far back country. His child- 
hood also was passed before the age of won- 
derful child-literature, — papers, magazines, 
books, — as it was before this age of curious, 
fascinating, and instructive child toys and 
games. He was what was then called "a 
good scholar ; " he learned his lessons easily, 
and usually stood at the head of his class. 
" Whether at school, at work, or play, he 
calculated to take the lead. He would jump 
a higher fence, or coast down a steeper hill, 
than any of his playmates. " He was en- 
thusiastic in fishing and in hunting, but was 
as warm in his opposition to every kind of 
cruelty to insect, fish, bird, or any dumb 
animal, as he was in his kindness to all human 
beings. Fond as he was of play and social 
amusements, he loved better what books 
he had, and often gave evenings to reading 
that other boys of the neighborhood passed 
in sports. At times, when working in the 
field, he carried a book in his pocket, and 



Sumner Ellis. 1 1 

improved many leisure moments consulting 
it, — thus making up as well as he could for 
the poverty of his school privileges. 

Although this boy did not early breathe 
the saturating and bracing atmosphere of 
generations of scholars, — his opportunities 
for schooling were meagre, and his advan- 
tages of reading narrow, — the book of Nature 
was wide open before him; her views and 
lessons from near and far were spread richly 
around him. West Hill and Tulley Mountain 
stood in plain sight of the house in which his 
grandfather, father, and he were born, while 
from various parts of the farm the lovely and 
grand scenery of Vermont and New Hamp- 
shire blessed his eyes. Those impressions 
were never lost ; they remained with him when 
his journeyings became extensive, helping to 
cultivate his vision until he saw very deeply 
into the world called " natural.'' Besides, 
he had large training of the moral sense ; not 
one of the five sons and two daughters of this 
Ellis family was known ever to use tobacco 
or intoxicating liquor in any shape or way. 
Conscience and the affections were wide awake 



12 Sumner Ellis. 

in that home. The stern, exacting virtues of 
the father, the fine, delicate, sweet qualities 
of the mother, — which Sumner in after years 
often took with him into his pulpit to illus- 
trate some high ideals of life, — and the warm 
tides of sisterly, brotherly, and neighborly 
feeling moved through him and enriched him 
beyond expression. Moreover, the family 
were associated with, and active among, the 
small body of Universalists worshipping in 
the town. Seth Ellis, called junior, was the 
leading man of the parish. For many years 
the pastor was the Rev. Levi Ballou, — a warm 
personal friend of his people ; and this large 
household knew well how to profit from the 
advantage. The youngest of the family cer- 
tainly needed no urging to make him a con- 
stant attendant at church and Sunday-school ; 
it would have required urging to have kept 
him away, after his higher nature was espe- 
cially kindled, as it was very early. Mr. Bal- 
lou helped him in many ways about his 
studies ; and if the idea of the ministry for 
a profession was born in his own youthful 
mind without the influence of the direct 



Sumner Ellis. 13 

words of any one, his pastor surely did much 
towards nourishing and maturing it. And the 
young parishioner, in turn, served this wise 
and tender friend in many ways about his 
parish interests, seeming to be " his right 
hand man, or boy. ,, 

It would be unwise to fail to recognize the 
wholesome forces that come from all the best 
advantages of early culture. Is it not also 
wise to try to recognize the reality of such ed- 
ucation as comes from a much harder course, 
— that is obtained by conquering difficulties 
at the price of great struggles, not only in 
spite of, but sometimes because of them? We 
need not guess by which course more men 
reach sound learning and high conditions of 
discipline and life. It is enough, on the one 
hand, to know there are many who ascend, 
seemingly borne along by the breath of every 
favoring circumstance, and, on the other, 
many who climb up rugged steeps to their 
victories, and do not know they have strug- 
gled and bled until they have won; and 
sometimes not then. 

Sumner remained at home until he was 



14 Sumner Ellis. 

eighteen years old, laboring on his father's 
farm, except the three months annually that 
he attended the district school, and the times 
he worked out his father's highway taxes at 
eight cents an hour. Occasionally he was in- 
vited to dinner by Moses Morton, whose name 
will appear a few pages farther on. Then for 
a full year he attended the Academy at New 
Salem, the next town west of Orange. He im- 
proved those opportunities with rare earnest- 
ness, and made such progress as those who are 
constantly engaged in study are not so likely 
to experience. He knew then, and at various 
stages of his development afterwards, that 
there are special blossoming seasons on life's 
ways, symbolized by certain changes of spring, 
when Nature leaps forth into verdure and 
bloom, forward towards summer and its yearly 
wealth and glory, more completely in a few 
days than during the several preceding weeks. 

In the autumn of 1847 the subject of this 
memorial, having passed his nineteenth birth- 
day, was one of a company of young men 
and women that made the beginning of Mel- 
rose Seminary, at West Brattleboro, Vermont. 



Sumner Bits. 15 

The principal was the present Rev. J. S. 
Lee, D.D., now one of the professors of St. 
Lawrence University Theological School. 
Sumner had already thought much of his 
profession, and had fully chosen the ministry. 
He was at work with fixed purpose and deter- 
mined will. Dr. Lee says, " He was a favorite 
scholar, thirsting for knowledge, industrious, 
faithful, thorough, independent in his re- 
searches, yet willing to listen to his teachers ; 
social, pleasant as a companion, popular with 
all classes. He began the study of Latin, and 
afterwards took up Greek, at the same time 
pursuing his studies in English. His essays 
were marked by simplicity and earnestness, 
elevated in tone and thought, spiritual, devo- 
tional. He was connected with the seminary 
about three years, going out to teach winters." 
For one of his age, he was mature in physique 
and manly in appearance, having attained his 
height and full size at twenty. He never in- 
creased in weight aftenvards, but from the 
effects of the heavy tasks he set himself as stu- 
dent, and the pressing burdens of his earliest 
preaching and pastoral experiences, before 



1 6 Sumner Ellis. 

reaching twenty-five he lost several pounds, 
which he never regained. He was tall, broad 
of shoulder, muscular, and thin ; his features 
were large, but well proportioned and finely 
moulded ; eyes deep-set, pleasant brown, 
mild and inviting, clear and penetrating; hair 
thick and heavy, so dark a brown as to be 
easily mistaken for black. When in Brattle- 
boro he much resembled a highly cultivated, 
truly accomplished, and deservedly popular 
Congregationalist who had been settled sev- 
eral years in the ministerial office in that town, 
and was more than ten years his senior ; each 
of these men was often mistaken for the other. 
The friends of the younger were happy to be 
thus confirmed in their prejudice as to his fine 
ministerial presence. Probably some of them 
thought more of the fact because in that small 
country school there were not less than six 
intimate classmates with hearts turned to- 
wards the ministry of the Universalist Church. 
They all carried out their purpose, and have 
made honorable records. Their names, stand- 
ing alphabetically, are, Ballou, Crehore, Ellis, 
Fisher, Goodenough, M'Collester. 



Sumner Ellis. 17 

It was during this period, — in the spring 
of 1848, — that the writer of these pages made 
his acquaintance. The young student read 
his first public hymn on Sunday before the 
young pastor's congregation; and from the 
time the one was twenty and the other twenty- 
three, our intimate friendship grew more 
intense and valuable. We did not always see 
each other every year, or correspond con- 
tinuously so often. Sometimes we did both 
very much oftener, — as frequently, doubtless, 
as men not living in the same house, or having 
special business relations, are ever likely to 
do. Sometimes the distance between us was 
as great as from the Kennebec to the Missis- 
sippi; sometimes farther than the stretch of 
the broadest ocean. Intelligent sympathy, 
however, feels the pulsations of life, and 
knows its drift thousands of miles away, even 
when no words fly back and forth for years. 
Nor was our friendship of the kind that re- 
veals everything to its confidant; many sur- 
face, incidental thoughts, and other things, 
each withheld from the other, to the perfect 
satisfaction of both, whether we kept them 

2 



1 8 Sumner Ellis. 

largely to ourselves, or told them less or 
more to other persons. This is the reason 
why I may not be able so well to illustrate 
some passages of Ellis's life as I might other- 
wise have been, or as some others may be. 
It was at this time that he began to preach, 
keeping up the practice of being an occasional 
supply until his ordination. His first sermon 
was delivered in West Brattleboro; text: 
" Behold, what manner of love the Father 
hath bestowed upon us." But he always 
claimed, and frequently recalled the incident, 
that the first money he received for preach- 
ing came from me, — about the only money 
matter of which we ever especially talked. To 
an unusual degree, even for a clergyman, he 
lived on the higher side of things. There 
must have been seasons when his treasury 
was low, if not empty ; and at any time be- 
fore he was fifty, it would have taken but 
a very few thousand dollars to make him 
feel comfortably independent. They would 
have actually made him thus. The higher 
things were so much more real to him than 
the lower ; he touched above so solidly, and 



Sumner Ellis. 19 

below so lightly, that he never could have 
troubled himself very much for mere earthly 
substances, unless at some late day he had 
found himself in absolute want. Money for 
exalted purposes and noble uses he under- 
stood ; but how to live serenely and richly in 
spirit on as little as any one in his position, 
he also understood. 

Early in 1850 Sumner Ellis began his direct 
mental preparation for the ministry. This 
was with the Rev. Hosea Ballou, 2d., D.D., 
pastor in Medford. He was a brother of the 
Orange minister, one of the most accom- 
plished scholars the Universalist denomina- 
tion has produced, and a few years later 
first President of Tufts College. The studies 
were, Paley's " Natural Theology,'' Paley's 
" Evidences of Christianity," Butler's " Anal- 
ogy," Greek New Testament, some com- 
mentaries, Robinson's " English Harmony 
of the Gospels," D'Aubigne's " History of 
the Reformation," Church histories, and 
other books, — by the standard theological 
authors of that time. The teacher and friend, 
though not a theological professor, knew all 



20 Sumner Ellis. 

such works thoroughly, and he frequently- 
received a few students into his family. One 
of the six young men mentioned preceded 
Mr. Ellis at that shrine of many ripe scholars 
as well as early students. He says of the 
favored opportunity : " But best of all, we 
learned from Dr. Ballou's experience, and 
drank in something of his wonderful con- 
scientiousness and spirit of devotion to his 
work. Nobody has ever yet written just 
what should be written of his remarkable 
private life and character. " Well may the 
pupil say this of that wise and beloved 
master, who with wife and all his children 
lives wholly in that kingdom of light and 
love of which he knew so much when on 
earth. The entire family have gone; and 
no person, save this fellow-pupil and friend, 
could have made the information contained 
in this paragraph complete. In October, 
185 1, the younger of these students was 
invited to a settlement as pastor; and with 
less than two years of such instruction and 
home influence, he proceeded to the duties 
of his profession. 



Sumner Ellis. 21 

Important events thicken in the life of 
this young man. Sumner Ellis and Mary 
Jane, daughter of Moses Morton and Mary 
Ann Holmes Fay, were married at North 
Orange, Oct. 28, 185 1. The officiating 
clergyman was the long-time pastor and 
personal friend of both families, the Rev. Levi 
Ballou. These young persons had grown 
up from earliest childhood in the same 
neighborhood ; they were mutually attracted 
when she had to lisp his name, attended 
the same district-school and Sunday-school, 
sat in adjoining pews of the old meeting- 
house, and later were much in each other's 
company as students of Melrose Seminary. 
" Theirs was one of those rare and happy 
unions which grow in beauty from the sweet 
confidence and trust of the little child to the 
full maturity and glory of life." It was no 
accident that their marriage was solemnized 
at the exact time he entered completely up- 
on the work of the Christian ministry. They 
went at once to the activities of the profes- 
sion in which, if he became a model pastor, she 
proved herself no less a pastor's model wife. 



22 Sumner Ellis. 

The venerable Rev. Sebastian Streeter, 
who in his prime was one of the most elo- 
quent of preachers and successful of pastors, 
had become enfeebled by disease and by 
the rapidly approaching infirmities of age. 
He was the popular minister of the First 
Universalist Society of Boston, — the old 
Hanover Street; yet his friends felt he 
needed a colleague. With rare unanimity, 
a call was given to Sumner Ellis, which he 
accepted. This meant for him more of toil- 
ing care and wearing responsibility than he 
could then possibly measure, or than those 
of whatever age or calling, not experienced 
in such beginnings of professional life, can 
at all comprehend. The greater the con- 
secration, the larger the tax that the brain 
and heart must always pay at the altars of 
devotion and work, the wider and tenderer 
the services to which the never-silent voices 
are calling on every side. The ordination 
and installation were solemnized on the nth 
of November, 185 1. Father Streeter, as he 
was familiarly called, preached the sermon; 
the Rev. Messrs. Goodrich, Webster, Miner, 



Sumner Ellis. 23 

Chapin, O. A. Skinner, and H. Ballou, 2d, 
participated in the services. Of the eight 
clergymen in the pulpit on that occasion 
only the last had the honorary degree of 
D.D., — afterwards all but one or two re- 
ceived the honor. Some of the changes of the 
intervening thirty-five years are further indi- 
cated by the fact that six of those eight 
men have passed into the realm which " eye 
hath not seen." The new minister was a 
few days less than twenty-three years and 
six months old, and was not so thoroughly 
furnished for his work as he ardently desired. 
Almost the entire labor of the pulpit and 
parish came at once upon him. He never 
heard Father Streeter preach except at his 
ordination and installation ; but he was fre- 
quently helped by the words of wisdom and 
encouragement which fell from the lips of 
the senior pastor in the famous conference 
meetings of that society in those days. He 
set himself earnestly at work in the study, 
Sunday-school, conference-meeting ; with the 
church organization, the sick, dying, and sor- 
rowing of the parish and community ; among 



24 Sumner Ellis. 

the young, the old, all ages and conditions. 
In all directions that his duty pointed he did 
his best to be worthy his position, having all 
the sympathy and aid from his young wife that 
she was able to give. Already the American 
population from the Hanover Street vicinity 
had begun rapidly to remove to other sections ; 
some Protestant meeting-houses were aban- 
doned by their congregations about that time ; 
yet all the interests of the parish of which 
our friend was colleague-pastor were fully 
sustained. In pastoral efficiency there was 
no lack suggested from any quarter; and 
even as a preacher there were but few in 
that large audience who detected any failure 
to feed the flock continuously with all that 
the hungry and weary soul needs. For some 
reason, however, — perhaps an impulse to 
breathe a little more freely for a few weeks 
from the burden of sermon-making ; possibly 
some lurking objection to his colleague rela- 
tions; probably more than all things else a 
thirst and hope for longer and deeper com- 
munings with his books : at any rate, towards 
the end of 1853 he resigned his position in 



Sumner Ellis. 25 

Boston, bidding the congregation and his 
venerable senior a loving farewell on the last 
Sunday of that year, in the midst of abun- 
dant and warm expressions of regret, esteem, 
and affection. 

On the 10th of that December Mr. Ellis 
had accepted a call to the pastoral office of 
the First Universalist Society of Salem. He 
at once removed, and began his ministry the 
first Sunday of 1854. The Salem parish had 
been blessed with the labors of a succession 
of remarkably able clergymen, and his imme- 
diate predecessor was the late Rev. Ebenezer 
Fisher, D.D., first President of the Canton, 
New York, Theological School. There, as 
in Boston, he gave himself without reserve 
to every interest of parish organizations and 
need of pastoral life. He worked easier and 
preached better than in his former position ; 
he was more widely felt among the general 
public, pursued his studies with truer system 
and larger breadth, took firmer hold of the 
great problems of theology and life, re- 
examined the grounds of his own faith and 
of other faiths; doubted, to believe more 



26 Sumner Ellis. 

intensely; found time, at least occasionally, 
to look up into the natural heavens and con- 
sider their lessons, abroad over the fields 
and ocean, and listen to their voices. A 
writer from Salem, describing " one of many 
tramps in old Essex" with this friend at 
that time, says, " the two have been on almost 
every square acre of the region round about, 
and on the harbor too." 

During this period a class of young clergy- 
men in the vicinity of Boston, including our 
friend, banded together for mutual improve- 
ment, particularly on the spiritual side of 
life. As fresh baptisms came to their souls, 
their people were renewed again and again. 
Three or four of these brethren came to 
my house in another State, on their way to 
a religious conference about thirty miles be- 
yond. Their zeal was so ardent, and much 
of their talk sounded so like the experi- 
ences of new converts, that I ventured to ask 
them: "How long is it since you first ex- 
perienced religion?" I think only one was 
silent; the rest, turning the answer particu- 
larly towards him, feeling sure he would take 



Sumner Ellis. 27 

it serenely, replied, " Ellis was born again 
about three months ago ! " The complete 
new birth of the Gospel is not one, but 
many; it is a succession of soul-awakenings 
and renewals unto perfection. Doubtless 
the " Essex Ministerial Circle " was the best 
thing of the kind Universalist clergymen 
have yet had. This Salem pastor was one 
of the most interested of the members ; 
giving whenever occasion seemed decidedly 
to urge him, but receiving with much more 
ardor and satisfaction. 

The writer inclines to the opinion that 
among our churches this friend of the young 
was the first to introduce the literary social 
element and organization ; and, social as he was 
himself, this with him was more literary than 
social. He had his own methods, usually sug- 
gesting such readings and topics of discussion 
as the mental activities of the times seemed 
to render most fitting and useful. He began 
this extra work with the years now in review, 
and the meetings were at his house. If there 
were then currents of deep religious feeling 
moving among the people, there were also 



28 Sumner Ellis. 

waves of scepticism and infidelity. Many 
evenings were passed in the reading and 
consideration of " certain scriptures." The 
interest and membership of that circle ex- 
tended considerably beyond the limits of his 
congregation, or brethren of like religious 
faith. This was the beginning of those clubs, 
religious and literary, of various grades, that 
he contributed so largely to introduce and 
sustain in different places, both in parishes 
when he was pastor, and outside of them 
when he was engaged in more purely literary 
work, and which afforded so much pleasure 
and profit to so many persons. Conspicuous 
among these were those in Chicago, Boston, 
and Cambridge. And Ellis was particularly 
the friend of the aged ; had time permitted, 
or had he thought it as essential, he might 
have arranged evenings or afternoons for 
special readings among them. If the ways 
in which he sought, all along his life, with 
much industry and love, to comfort and cheer 
them could be told, it would appear that his 
sympathies were wide enough to embrace 
the extremes of youth and old age, as well 



Sumner Ellis. 29 

as the extremes of culture and ignorance, 
of goodness and the want of it. On occa- 
sions of social greetings, his returns from 
short or long absences, or whatever the 
peculiarity of the meetings, if there did not 
come as many of the old as of the young 
to greet him, it was because the former were 
not so numerous as the latter. 

Notwithstanding all this no direct minis- 
terial duty was neglected, and every depart- 
ment of the Salem parish prospered. The 
meeting-house was thoroughly remodelled; 
the Sunday-school — larger than ever be- 
fore, and one of the very largest and most 
thoroughly organized, if not in every way 
the foremost of the denomination to w T hich 
it belonged — outgrew the vestry, which was 
enlarged and beautified ; the church organi- 
zation increased ; conference-meetings were 
notably good; congregations w r ere continu- 
ously and conspicuously large. He preached 
twice on Sunday as regularly as once, and 
not infrequently three times. The preacher 
in those days was expected often to bring 
forth things new and old for the waiting 



30 Sumner Ellis. 

hearer. This, too, was expected without any 
vacation season, as the rule ; and so the num- 
ber of sermons given to the same congrega- 
tion by the average city pastor in this part 
of the country per year then, was more than 
double the number delivered by the average 
city pastor now. To all human appearance 
Ellis enjoyed one of the most successful pas- 
torates that that honorable, large, and, for its 
creed, ancient parish ever knew. In spite of 
this, he decided to vacate the position before 
fully completing his fifth year, mainly be- 
cause he had wrought so hard in the study 
and in the parish that he was kindled with 
desires for larger attainments and truer re- 
sults. He wanted to know more, and to do 
better. His ideal rose so high above the 
quality of his best work, when so much 
seemed necessary, that most of it was poor 
and mean to his own appreciation. He de- 
termined to pause a while from full activities 
among the many-sided labors of his profes- 
sion, and to have a season devoted almost 
wholly to study, and to such further mental 
development and heart-nurture as should 



Sumner Ellis. 31 

especially refit and reinstall him in the work 
of life. He closed his relations with the 
Salem parish at the end of August, 1858, 
having a strong hold upon all classes with 
whom he had been associated. The young — 
the most numerous of the persons especially 
dependent upon the aid such a man is able 
to give — felt very deeply at first that they 
could not do without him. But his influence 
was not of the kind which inspired more 
love for himself than for the truth he sought 
to unfold and impress by word and deed. 

This successful, aspiring, conscientious cler- 
gyman, with the weight of seven years of 
intense ministerial labor and experience upon 
and within him, went to Cambridge in the fall 
of 1858. It is not understood that he entered 
any of the classes of Harvard University; 
he had liberty to work in the academic, sci- 
entific, and theological departments. He at- 
tended lectures on metaphysics, and studied 
in some departments of chemistry, botany, 
and zoology, reading as thoroughly as he 
could the different works upon these sub- 
jects. Under the tuition of Professor Agassiz, 



3 2 Sumner Ellis. 

he was deeply interested in biology; and 
the reader of his sermons will find more than 
one reference to this great naturalist. Ellis 
devoted considerable time to the German 
schools of thought in philosophy and theol- 
ogy, He received special aid by personal 
intercourse with President Dr. James Walker. 
He knew Emerson well by study and per- 
sonal interviews ; at this time he carefully 
read Darwin, Huxley, Spencer, and Tyndall. 
The Rev. S. H. M'Collester, D. D., one of 
the six special seminary students, who had 
rare opportunities for knowing the work of 
this friend then, says: " He mastered Carlyle, 
De Quincey, Landor, Plutarch, Addison, Mar- 
tineau, Humboldt, and many other authors. 
Shakspeare he read and read and read." It 
is impossible to draw the line between what 
he accomplished in Cambridge then, and 
what he did there and elsewhere before and 
afterwards. He did much solid study and 
careful reading at that time, following in ways 
he had previously started, and making begin- 
nings in some departments which he contin- 
ued to the end of his career. It was not later 



Sumner Ellis. 33 

than this date that he became fond of the 
old poets and scholars of Greece and Rome. 
His mind, long in pursuit of the best litera- 
ture, reached the degree of culture and refine- 
ment in which he saw the best things in 
thought, taste, and art. While at Harvard, 
he usually supplied on Sundays in Brighton. 

In March, i860, he became pastor of the 
First Universalist Society in Lynn. He 
preached there to many with an effectiveness 
rarely excelled ; shaped characters of young 
men and women ; helped children into the 
kingdom of heaven ; supplied the aged with 
the rich nourishment of love and trust; 
proved what he sought to be in his previous 
pastorates, — a special messenger of consola- 
tion to the sorrowing ; and did in every way 
the work of the Christian minister. Mrs. 
Ellis also is reported as " doing a great deal 
that was never pushed into public notice/' as 
she did in Boston and Salem. It was in Lynn 
that she won the reputation of organizing the 
first infant-class of that Sunday-school, and one 
of the earliest in the denomination, — which 
ever since has been a conspicuous illustration 

3 



34 Sumner Ellis. 

of what may be done in such nurseries of 
early childhood in religion. The sea-air of 
Lynn was unfavorable to her health, and the 
settlement there was terminated in the autumn 
of 1862. That winter Mr. Ellis and his wife 
went to New York. Soon he was compli- 
mented with an invitation to supply the pulpit 
of the Church of the Divine Paternity, and do 
the parish work during the proposed extended 
absence abroad of its renowned minister, the 
Rev. E. H. Chapin, D. D. Here the pastoral 
duties were discharged with an unusual degree 
of fidelity. The pressing public demands 
made upon the famous Dr. Chapin's time and 
strength, rendered it absolutely impossible for 
him, during the previous many years, to do 
much home work outside of his pulpit, except 
to attend funerals and visit the sick and sor- 
rowing, — which he did with great faithfulness 
and impartiality. Hence much needed service 
awaited the temporary pastor, and few knew 
how to do it so effectively. He visited many 
families that were largely helped by his kindly 
personal communications, and he strength- 
ened various organizations in the parish with 



Sumner Ellis. 35 

his judicious, gentle, firm, loving hand. What- 
ever the advantage gained by him in these 
ways for his pulpit administrations, he held a 
much larger congregation than was antici- 
pated, in view of the fact that usually a 
stranger in the pulpit of this marvellous, if 
not matchless orator, or almost any exchange 
for a single service in those days, would tell 
very sadly against the size of the audience. 
This was inevitable, because of the many 
strangers that thronged Dr. Chapin's church. 
In this delicate and critical position the con- 
gregations were more than respectable from 
first to last. Many listened, and blessed 
Heaven for their privileges. 

Having closed his services with the Church 
of the Divine Paternity, the " Rev. Sumner 
Ellis commenced his labors as associate pastor 
of the Shawmut Universalist Church, Boston, 
with the Rev. T. B. Thayer, D.D., June r, 
1863. Of his work there it may be truly said 
that he was successful. He was a fine sermon- 
izer, thoroughly consecrated to his pastorate, 
and a devout, earnest, humble minister of the 
church. He had a deep interest in the Sunday- 



36 Sumner Ellis. 

school, and was always an appreciative friend 
of the teachers. Of him it may be affirmed 
he was the friend of the children, the guide 
of the young, the companion of those in 
active life and of the aged. He was a leader 
of his people, respected by all and loved by 
all." If an authoritative statement can be 
made, it is this ; and what more need be said, 
except that he resigned this charge Oct. 
31, 1865? The parish had not arranged for 
two permanent salaries, and every feeling of 
the associate pastor led him voluntarily and 
without hesitation to relinquish his place. 
The purpose was carried out almost as soon 
as fixed. Scarcely did his friends have time 
to consider the movement — many, including 
most of his relatives, knew nothing of it — ■ 
until, with his uncertain fortunes in his hands, 
he was on his way West. Exactly what his 
feelings were, may not have been understood. 
There is no question, however, that he was 
always self-respecting, and no less considerate 
of the rights of others; always just, kind, 
generous, brave. His relations with Dr. 
Thayer and the whole Shawmut Church 



Sumner Bits. 37 

remained ever cordial. He was always wel- 
comed in their homes and pulpit, where in 
later years he often visited and spoke. 

At that time Mr. Ellis meditated some busi- 
ness venture ; but he soon wrote to an intimate 
friend that he concluded he " was not made 
for that sort of thing." Surely not. It was 
only a surface-impulse born of aweary brain; 
and such waves pass over thousands of men 
in like circumstances, the substantial drift of 
whose lives is as fixed as was his. Sumner 
Ellis permanently absorbed in business ! As 
well think of a fish living permanently in the 
air, or a bird in the water. He preached suc- 
cessfully in Milwaukee and Dubuque; he did 
literary work in Chicago, and became acting 
pastor of St. Paul's Universalist Church in that 
city. The Rev. W. H. Ryder, D. D., was then 
much worn by his long and important pas- 
torate, and he sought rest. He knew his man, 
and requested the Milwaukee pastor, if he 
could not be induced to carry forward the 
work so favorably started there, to take his 
until he should be ready to resume it. The 
popular minister of that well-known and influ- 



38 Sumner Ellis. 

ential parish proposed extensive journeyings 
and a vacation which should fully renew his 
life. It is believed that every interest of St. 
Paul's was well considered and sustained. 
The trust in every way was honored, and 
with such recognized satisfaction that when, a 
few years later, the Church of the Redeemer 
in that city was in particular need of " the 
right minister," it did not ask him to become 
a candidate, but called him on his reputation. 
Later still, when St. Paul's again desired his 
services, of course the dignity of people and 
minister was observed in the negotiations. 
Mr. Ellis left Chicago late in 1870. He was 
settled in Newark, New Jersey, November the 
6th of that year. " He was greatly beioved by 
all who came within the charmed circle of his 
personal influence." He wrote some of his 
best sermons while there; and the report 
from the church is, " he did most by his ex- 
ample, and best by the power of his refined 
thought and sensibilities." 

Closing his ministry in Newark, April 1, 
1872, Mr. Ellis went directly to Boston for 
long, earnestly desired literary work. During 



Sumner Ellis. 39 

two years and a half he gave himself to this 
with deep enthusiasm, supplying for the most 
part on Sundays in East Cambridge. The 
particular work at this time was the produc- 
tion of his book, " At Our Best; or, Making 
the Most of Life." That volume was the 
fruit of varied and deep experience, wide 
and careful reading, studied and refined 
writing. It contains no chapter, perhaps 
no page, without illustrations of highest 
thought, deepest feeling, purest expression. 
If opened anywhere, fine authorship will be 
detected ; and the sentences must generally 
be read more than once or twice, if one 
would see all the beauties they contain, or 
take in all the shades of meaning. Some one 
calls the book " a choice mosaic of delightful 
reading for persons of literary taste." An- 
other says, "Its charming pages, inculcating 
a cheerful and healthy philosophy of life, will 
continue to make hosts of friends as the vol- 
ume becomes more widely known." When 
it appeared, it was handsomely noticed in 
many directions. In style, the essays were 
Emersonian. 



40 Sumner Ellis. 

During the earlier stages of our friend's 
much reading he was bookish. Who is not 
at such times? But later his reservoir of 
knowledge became too large and too full 
for any direct, perceptible effect to be pro- 
duced upon his thought or style, though he 
devoured books by the dozen per month. 
In the infancy of its development, the human 
mind always becomes very largely the food 
that is crammed into it; in the full manhood 
of its growth and maturity, it assimilates the 
world of thought, and is itself that. A barrel 
of water poured into a brook becomes the 
brook for a while ; but the water of the Mis- 
sissippi — yea, and of all the rivers of the 
globe — flows into the ocean, and is ocean. 
Whether it began at this period, or at an ear- 
lier or later one, for years there was a con- 
flict in the mind of our brother as to which 
he more earnestly desired to do, — ministe- 
rial, or literary work. He loved both, and he 
wrought faithfully in each, when either had 
supreme hold of him. Xow and then both 
seemed to have large sway over him at the 
same time. It remained to be determined if 



Sumner Ellis. 41 

either should at length more fully possess him, 
and if so, which. 

Mr. Ellis was invited in the fall of 1874 to be- 
come minister of the Church of the Redeemer 
in Chicago. He began his work in that rela- 
tion in October. The following citation is 
authentic; and though considerably represen- 
tative of outward phases (for present purposes 
it is all the better for that), the author of this 
memorial is glad to present it to the reader : 

" Mr. Ellis came to us at a time of severe finan- 
cial depression. The society was heavily in debt, — 
so much so as to lose all legal claim upon the church 
building in which it worshipped. For two years the 
pastor voluntarily relinquished live hundred dollars 
of his three thousand salary. With the inspiration 
of his direct encouragement, the parish by heroic 
efforts raised the money to redeem the property and 
make extensive repairs and improvements upon the 
church building. During his ministry the parish 
adopted the 6 pay as you go ' principle, and the 
trustees have been able to report ' no debt ' up to 
the present time. There were no sensational re- 
vivals, no immense accessions to society or church 
during his pastorate ; but the parish was kept in a 
healthy condition, and solidified noticeably under 



4 2 Sumner Ellis. 

his ministry. Ninety-two new members united with 
the church. His preaching was of a high intellec- 
tual order. He inaugurated the system of an annual 
course of lectures, assisted in securing talented lec- 
turers, and always gave one or more himself during 
each course. He secured the formation of a society 
among the young people of the congregation, called 
the ' Willing Workers,' whose name was changed after 
he left us to 'The Ellis Society.' He formed a ' Ten- 
nyson Class/ whose readings, under his supervision, 
were a source of much intellectual pleasure and im- 
provement. He helped the Sunday-school materially 
by meeting with the teachers at stated times, and 
keeping up their interest in the lessons by his wise 
suggestions. He also formulated a regular series of 
lessons upon various portions of Scripture, from time 
to time, for the use of the school. Mr. Ellis offered 
his resignation, to take effect at the end of five years' 
service among us ; and when this was received, the 
society held a special meeting, at which it was unani- 
mously voted to ask him to withdraw it, and a com- 
mittee of five was appointed to urge him to remain 
with us. The picture of his countenance now hangs 
in our Sunday-school room, and the recollection of 
his personality and of his good words and work in 
our behalf is forever enshrined in our hearts." 

It was during this pastorate that Mr. Ellis's 
little volume, " Hints on Preaching/' went to 



Sumner Ellis. 43 

press. This was the result of greater study 
than is easily imagined. He had the work 
in mind a number of years, — some time, in 
fact, before the beginning of this Chicago 
pastorate, — and he prepared for a much 
larger book and a more exhaustive treat- 
ment of the subject than he compiled. What 
was published, contains " hints " of his own 
work, not less than upon the great theme 
treated. He says of his selections : " They 
are central ideas which their authors have 
elaborated into chapters, . . . abridgments of 
wisdom," or, as he quotes Cervantes, " short 
sentences drawn from long experience. " He 
selects very largely, if not wholly, from origi- 
nal sources of not less than sixty authors in 
this department of Christian literature. He 
puts one name to from fifteen to twenty 
paragraphs, not familiar in this realm of 
thought; and it is doubtful if any reader 
knows where to look for other sayings of 
the kind by " Lisle." That is the name over 
which our brother, for some reason, wrote 
some of his own thoughts ; and there is no 
hazard in the opinion that much in those 



44 



Sumner Ellis. 



paragraphs is not out of place standing on 
pages with the best things of the best authors 
on the art and spirit of preaching. After 
having said much else upon the point, he 
says this with reference to preparation for 
the beginnings of public prayers : — 

" But the best safeguard against the stale and 
stereotyped introduction to pulpit prayer is a soul 
already kindled by the length and strength of its 
closet communions, and that goes to the temple, 
not to introduce itself to God, but- as one already in 
the midst of its spiritual interview with him, alive to 
his presence, rejoicing in his mercies, and hopeful 
of his continued grace." 

With like limitations, he says this about 
the preachers sympathy with the people 
whom he addresses : — 

" The speaker who attempts to captivate his au- 
dience by a frequent use of the phrases, ' My 
beloved friends ! ' 6 My cherished hearers I ' ' My 
dear brethren ! ' will only disgust. The love that will 
win and bring hearts into the best relations with the 
orator is that which shows itself in deeds, and not 
in words. It will appear in the choice of the 
theme, and in the toil that is put into its treatment 



Sumner Ellis. 45 

to render it of service. It will show itself in the 
humanity of the preacher's thought and discussion, 
and will need no bell to notify its presence. The 
more it is hidden, the more it will appear ; and the 
less its avowal, the greater its sway." 

This is among the things he declares con- 
cerning the specific purpose of preaching: 

" Themes are not final, but instrumental. ' To 
what end am I about to discuss this topic ? ' should 
be the searching question with which every minister 
should come to the task of preparing his discourse ; 
and if he finds in his heart no distinct response, let 
him set about discovering one, that his conscience 
may stand void of offence, and his mind and heart 
acquire direction and impulse. As the racer runs 
for a goal, and the sailor sails for a port, and the 
lawyer pleads for a verdict, let the preacher preach 
for some Christian result that shall inspire and 
justify his toil;" 

Take these from his words upon positive- 
ness in preaching: — 

" It is well to deny errors, it is better to affirm 
truths. But it is worst of all to foster a general 
distrust of all conclusions, so that a congregation 
will only know that it does not know, and only 



4 6 



Sumner Bits. 



believe that there is nothing to be believed. This 
state of mental uncertainty will soon lead to the 
questioning of moral verdicts. As a man must love 
art and music because they address themselves to 
his constitution, so must he love religion if it be 
presented to him in its positive and self-evidencing 
elements. Even the atheist, who assumes that the 
spiritual realm is a fiction, cannot succeed in crowd- 
ing it out of his thoughts, but comes round to it 
with a singular frequency, as if his instinct were so 
strong he could not hold it down ; or rather, as if 
in the midst of his mental denials his spirit caught 
views of the ever-precious affirmations, — God, the 
soul, immortality. Hence that must be the best 
preaching which appeals to the soul as light to the 
eye and love to the heart." 

Observe these words, upon various phases 
of preaching : — 

" Time is a necessary element in the generation 
of any fine fervor. The Sibyl must mount her tripod 
for a season of preliminary exercises in order to charge 
her soul with the true fire of Apollo. . . . Those 
periods in which most of beauty and force are com- 
bined, are births from the brain and the heart in their 
happy conjunction. Intelligence and emotion leave 
worthy progeny. . . . One should attend to dress- 
ing his fit ideas in attractive costumes by an ideal 



Sumner Ellis. 47 

process, as Raphael saw his angels in vision before 
he began the task of transferring them to canvass." 

Among the friendships with eminent men 
formed by Sumner Ellis during his Chicago 
Church of the Redeemer pastorate, were those 
of the Rev. Drs. David Swing and H. \V. 
Thomas. The relations between him and 
the latter were peculiarly interesting and ten- 
der. The writer of these pages is pleased 
in this connection to insert these impressions 
of Dr. Thomas : — 

"The life of one so gentle, so retiring, so en- 
tirely free from noise and display, was not great 
in the popular sense of a bold leadership and dar- 
ing deeds. Its greatness was in the quiet power of 
the real, the genuine, the noble, and the good in 
culture, in spirit, in purpose and deed, — a greatness 
that is always felt and confessed in the affairs of 
men and in the progressive movements of society. 
He was a steady, persistent, and powerful reserve- 
force, lying back of the more prominent leaders 
and pushing them forward, and a force on whom 
they could always rely, and if need be, draw. 
He was the friend and the helper of every good 
cause. Beneath the calm surface there was a 
depth and an intensity that were revealed and felt 



4 3 



Sumner Ellis. 



in all he did, whether in work or play, — and I 
was with him in both, — more in work than in play ; 
for such days of recreation were not many. We 
were together a year in Hebrew; we hunted and 
fished together, visited together the sick and the 
well, and together laid out the plans of sermons and 
read books ; and in everything I could but notice 
and feel this concealed intensity. I think that it 
shortened his days ; and that when he returned 
from the Old World, where this consuming desire 
to leave nothing undone and to do everything well, 
and had for such an inexhaustible field/ his reserve 
physical forces had been so drawn upon that there 
was nothing left with which to resist the disease of 
which he died. But if we are to measure life by 
what one does, and really lives in thought and sen- 
timent, and not by years, Dr. Ellis's life was not 
short. 

" Personally, the friendship of Dr. Ellis during 
the transitional period when my own thoughts and 
views were changing, and in the years of contro- 
versy and church troubles that followed these 
changes, was an abiding comfort and support. He 
was born into a larger faith ; I had to find my own 
way into the better hope through long struggles. 
He foresaw the end to which my premises and 
reasonings must lead ; but he was too wise and too 
considerate of my feelings to attempt in any abrupt 
way to hasten the conclusion. When it was reached, 



Sumner Ellis. 49 

— not all at once, but slowly, as dawns the day, — 
we rejoiced together. 

" Other men may be admired for their great learn- 
ing and ability ; but Dr. Ellis, while not wanting in 
these, was loved for his real worth, — loved as a 
friend, loved because he was lovable and loved 
others." 

Mr. and Mrs. Ellis returned to the vicinity 
of Boston, after their five years' work with the 
Church of the Redeemer, late in 1879. They 
at once took the house, a little way over the 
Cambridge line, in West Somerville, from 
which they went in answer to their Chicago 
call. Their friends soon observed that Mrs. 
Ellis was to an unusual degree in delicate 
health. She continued to decline until she 
died, May 28, 1 880. The husband said: " I 
never heard her speak an unkind or incon- 
siderate word. She was one of the gentlest 
spirits God ever put into a mortal body." 
At that time he was reading widely the books 
and parts of books, ancient and modern, 
prose and poetry, upon the idea of the inde- 
structibility of the human soul. He purposed 
to produce in popular, easy, comprehensible 

4 



50 Sumner Ellis. 

form, if possible, a work upon intimations of 
immortality. His great sorrow pushed this 
plan aside. The condition of his heart was 
such that he cared not for the arguments 
upon this subject. Is it strange? They 
were even distasteful to him. The conscious- 
ness of the great fact, the feeling of it, was 
more than sufficient. Probably he never 
afterwards, if indeed he had before, attempted 
to demonstrate to mourners crushed by do- 
mestic affliction the truth that the soul is 
undying; but he always assumed it, as he as- 
sumed the existence of God and the spirit in 
man. To argue about the historical validity 
of the communion service in the presence of 
the symbols of Christ's body and blood, is a 
strange procedure; let such arguments come 
at other times to those who need them : now 
its truth cannot be made more evident to the 
soul than it is. When our dead are near, the 
eye detects and the heart feels intimations 
of immortality that are infinitely great, but 
which the mere philosophical intellect, treat- 
ing the subject coolly, if it sees or feels these 
at all, is too proud to weave them into an 



Sumner Ellis. 51 

argument. Intimations of immortality are 
everywhere that God and the soul and spir- 
itual truth are; and the results of that reading 
with the fruits of deeper experiences than can 
be read out of others' thoughts or lives, were 
scattered in many ways throughout this be- 
liever's work. 

Rarely are man and woman so nearly all 
and all to each other as were this husband 
and this wife. " They were always together, 
and seemed of one thought and one heart." 
That was a sad summer for him ; " no centre 
anywhere, all circumference." That autumn, 
by special invitation, he went to Chicago and 
supplied his recent Church of the Redeemer 
charge for a while, and he particularly aided 
the parish in settling his successor, as he did, 
after the resignation of the Rev. W. S. Crowe, 
in securing the Rev. Charles Conklin for the 
parish. Then during the holidays, sadder 
still, if possible, he made his way to Cincin- 
nati, and he supplied the pulpit of his de- 
nomination in that city for several months. 

With the early summer of 1881, having ne- 
gotiations in his hands for writing the Life 



5 2 Sumner Ellis. 

of the Rev. Dr. Chapin, he went again to the 
vicinity of Boston. He made his residence 
this time in Cambridge, very near Harvard 
University, and with his long-tried friends 
Mr. and Mrs. John E. Davis. He had 
boarded with the father of Mr. Davis in Bos- 
ton when first settled in Hanover Street ; and 
this son was one of many young men, since 
prominent in all departments of life, upon 
whose hearts he then took hold, never to let go. 
He called the privilege of this home " ideal. " 
While meditating, searching for material, 
and writing the Life of Dr. Chapin, Dr. 
Ellis passed nearly a year and a half. If the 
reader observes a title with Mr. Ellis's name 
not before given in these pages by the author, 
the explanation is, this is as soon in the order 
of this record, after it belonged to him, as 
it could be used, without undue haste to 
crown him with the honor. Buchtel College 
gave it to him at its Commencement in 1880, 
not a year before the time now in review. 
No man could have worked more conscien- 
tiously, or with truer devotion to his subject, 
than did our friend on his difficult task of 



Sumner Ellis. 53 

attempting to write a just biography of the 
wonderful preacher and orator. Days and 
weeks were occupied in hunting for facts, put 
into lines, months for data, woven into brief 
sentences ; and then the effort to reach up to 
and take down upon paper a man who stood 
so high above most great men, in such 
true ways that his admirers and strangers 
shall see him there ! He who has not tried 
that kind of work, praying for light and 
strength to do the duty faithfully, cannot 
estimate it. Dr. Ellis would labor as long as 
he could, and then rush into the open air, 
call upon friends, go to some place of public 
instruction or entertainment, or read some 
favorite author, — this, week after week, and 
month after month. His graceful pen and 
much reading, told richly at all points of the 
work. Reviewers were markedly complimen- 
tary. Many ranked the work among the best 
biographies ever written. " Dr. Ellis's Life 
of Dr. Chapm," says one, in connection with 
many other things as good, " is a rare and 
exceedingly unique biography. No other 
than a master artist could have painted such 



54 Sumner Ellis. 

a word-picture. Its central figure is grand, 
whatever view you take of it, with all its 
shades and touching beauties. Its whole 
setting is as of precious stones. Like a 
Madonna of Raphael, the more you study it 
the more you are enraptured by it." 

" Dr. Ellis was surprisingly many-sided, 
with a curious brain that was a very museum 
of scraps of knowledge, incidents, and facts of 
life, quaint stories of authors, poets, and the 
celebrities of the earth." A Boston reading- 
club of 1 872-1 874, that his friends the 
members insisted upon calling " The Ellis 
Club," studied with him Dante, Milton, Cole- 
ridge, Browning, Tennyson, and others of the 
poets ; and all agreed that " he was an accom- 
plished scholar in English literature, whose 
poetic insight was almost an unfailing inter- 
preter." An editor who knew him well at 
different stages of his progress, speaking at 
one time with him of Morell's " Critical His- 
tory of the Philosophy of the Nineteenth 
Century," remarks that he told him then, 
" he could not ' get the hang/ " declaring that 
" at a later date he got the full accent." 



Sumner Ellis. 55 

Again this editor says of him: "He was a 
student especially of literature; he studied 
not so much the dilutions and interpreta- 
tions of the masters as the masters them- 
selves. He did not read comments upon 
Goethe and Montaigne; he read and re-read 
Goethe and Montaigne." Dr. Ellis knew 
thoroughly the great masters in prose and in 
poetry, and said that he " could find no poet 
so grand as David, no thinker so profound as 
Paul, no teacher so complete as Christ." 

Had Dr. Ellis left no other evidence, the 
sermons of this memorial volume prove that 
he gave large attention in his reading to all 
questions affecting the validity of religion. 
In an examination of about three hundred of 
his sermons there is found " no word the spirit 
of which any Christian dying could wish to 
blot,'' and " no sentence which contradicts 
the supremacy of this religion, or fails, when- 
ever occasion calls for such use, to be turned 
to the most wholesome defence or applica- 
tion of it." Whatever else he did, he did 
not fail to read everything really service- 
able to the ministerial profession. He was 



56 Sumner Ellis. 

familiar with recent materialism; he was 
every way armed for the defence of his- 
torical Christianity, and he knew the deeper 
things which lie back of and make the true 
historical possible. He was a thoroughly 
Christian preacher, —a revelationist rather 
than an evolutionist. Christ lived in his 
mind and heart; and his faith was as broad 
as universal truth, and his sympathies were 
as wide-reaching as earth, heaven, or hell. 
Ethical culture he surely had, and assthetical 
and classical too, — all contributing more or 
less to the quality of his simple and mighty 
Christian beliefs. He saw and felt the truth 
of Christian things in every direction; and 
few ministers of the broadest and most truly 
liberal faith could unfold it so clearly and 
effectively to the largest and sharpest of 
human minds by nature and by culture, es- 
pecially if he could meet them personally, 
so that questions and answers might immedi- 
ately follow, — a thing which shallowness and 
insincerity may well dread. 

Dr. Ellis wrote much for various papers 
and periodicals of his denomination, — now as 



Sumner Ellis. 57 

transient correspondent, then as regular or 
editorial contributor; and again as temporary 
editor, Among the lecture-sermons that he 
delivered in Chicago was a series on the 
" Battles of the Churches ; " and he prepared 
courses on Church History, Biography, and 
General Literature. Of his literary or col- 
lege and lyceum addresses may be mentioned 
those upon " Emerson/' " Charles Sumner," 
" Proverbs of Nations," and " Art in Religion." 
His library at no time, after he was thoroughly 
started as a student, fairly represented him, 
because he accomplished so much in the best 
public libraries of the country, to which he 
had easy access, and because it was his custom 
to discard those books of his own that he had 
outgrown, or which he had used to his full need 
for particular studies. His instincts, culture, 
all his methods of thought, were in the direction 
of fine writing; and in later years, especially, 
he had great felicity of style. He was, indeed, 
then a master in the use of words; "none 
could weave them into more royal webs." 

He was deeply interested in all true educa- 
tion ; he assisted in determining a site for Dean 



58 Sumner Ellis. 

Academy, and numbered among his acquaint- 
ances and personal friends many, if not all, the 
leaders in the higher institutions of learning 
connected with his denomination, and some 
others. He was a welcome visitor at Tufts 
College, and always received a cordial hear- 
ing when he spoke in the chapel. He w r ent 
from Chicago to give the address to the grad- 
uating class of the Theological School in St. 
Lawrence University of 1876; Buchtel invited 
him to deliver its annual oration in 1879; 
and, as has been seen, the year after, that 
College gave him his honorary degree. For 
a number of years he was a trustee of Lom- 
bard University, and his counsel was ahvays 
highly valued. He gave several addresses 
before that institution, and President the Rev. 
Dr. White says : " His very presence among 
young men and women was a stimulant to 
high endeavor. Dr. Ellis was the embodi- 
ment of the highest type of the Christian 
gentleman." 

" Christian gentleman" is what those who 
knew him well, call him as naturally as they 
speak his name. A large number of men 



Sumner Ellis. 59 

who thoroughly understand the meaning of 
these words, have applied them to him alto- 
gether independently of each other. What 
better can be said of anyone? His friends 
ranked in years among all, from little children 
to extreme old age ; in culture, from begin- 
ners to the most advanced ; in character, from 
weakness and sin to the noblest in virtue and 
the loftiest in saintship, — and for no other 
reason so surely as that he knew how to be 
and was a thorough Christian gentleman. He 
gave the best of all he had and was, as com- 
pletely to one friend or companion alone, as 
to the multitude, — a quality and habit which 
grew in him to the day of his death. He was 
unique as a minister, and still more so as a 
man. " His influence was as subtle as the 
breath of the wild flowers, and as strong and 
pungent as the scent of the newly ploughed 
fields." " His breadth of sympathy, his self- 
abnegation, his subtle sense of unseen things, 
we can in terms name ; but there was a per- 
vasive, lovable quality in him which eludes 
all descriptive phrases. He may be classified 
with such as Charles Lamb, Blaise Pascal, and 



60 Sumner Ellis. 

the Apostle John. He has won a fame far 
above the commonplace. His name cannot 
soon be a finished theme." 

In length of pastoral settlements, Dr. Ellis 
was exceeded by many ministers of much 
less ability. Temperaments, motives, and 
objects, as well as circumstances under which 
ministers labor, differ widely among those 
equally worthy and useful. If many of the 
most self-sacrificing and successful have held 
the longest pastorates, so have many of the 
most self-sacrificing and successful been the 
most itinerant. If it has been the policy of 
some denominations to retain their pastors 
to the extreme limit of time, the most won- 
derful for growth of any one in this country 
has been so organized as absolutely to forbid 
extended pastorates. Whatever may be the 
personal preferences of many parishes and of 
many clergymen at present, and whatever 
may be best for the cause of religion now, 
Christianity was founded and widely diffused 
by travelling missionaries ; and whether stay- 
ing or going, some have lived more and done 
more in one year, than others in ten years. 



Sumner Ellis. 61 

Dr. Ellis has made his own record; and in 
no way has the writer attempted, nor will he 
attempt, to overstate the truth, — while words 
fail in some of the best realities of our friend's 
life fully to express it. He would have ad- 
vised no man to do exactly as he did ; no 
one would be safe in attempting to imi- 
tate any peculiarity of another. With right 
conditions, he favored long pastorates; but 
he never remained with any parish to ac- 
commodate himself. His somewhat frequent 
changes did not tend to idleness, but to more 
intense industry; they did not produce nar- 
rowness, but greater breadth. The new sur- 
roundings, however pleasant or unpleasant, 
never disturbed the roots of healthy, pure, 
vigorous life. They were rather among the 
occasions of deeper foundations, greater cen- 
tres, wider circumferences, under and over 
and through all of which pulsated an ever- 
growing mind and an ever-quickening spirit 
How else could he have known and served 
so many persons, read so extensively, written 
so much, and become the man of generous 
culture and wide-reaching influence that he 



62 Sumner Ellis. 

was? Some particular parish or parishes 
might have had more of him ; the world, 
and the denomination also, would have had 
less. Otherwise, of course, he would have 
been a different person, but not Sumner 
Ellis. 

Completing his Life of Dr. Chapin in the 
summer of 1882, Dr. Ellis had not seen the 
whole proof of it when he was invited by 
St. Paul's Church, Chicago, to become their 
minister, either as supply or pastor, as he 
should choose. Whatever the name of the 
relation, it was understood to be temporary, 
— until the church could make selection 
of a permanent pastor. St. Paul's parish, 
however, with the satisfactory arrangement 
of Dr. Ellis for minister, was disposed to be 
tardy in looking farther, and urged that he 
become their pastor. This ministry lasted 
about two years, — from the beginning of 
September, 1882, to the middle of July, 1884. 
Although his purposes were fixed for a brief 
work in this position, and to devote himself at 
no distant day more completely than ever to 
literary pursuits, his pastoral services could 



Sumner Ellis. 63 

hardly have been more faithfully performed ; 
and his sermons were largely new, many re- 
ceiving the highest commendations. Among 
his hearers much of the time were Dr. Ryder 
and family, and none were more truly ex- 
pressive of warm appreciation of his best 
efforts. He felt he had a right to retire from 
pastoral services, and he pressed the church 
to call his successor, helping in all practical 
ways to the right selection and to secure the 
one towards whom all finally turned, — the 
Rev. John Coleman Adams, of Lynn, Massa- 
chusetts. He kept up his work until the 
arrival of Mr. Adams in Chicago, and both 
were happy. He purposed, after a season of 
absence, to be a faithful parishioner in St. 
Paul's Church, and to lend a hand in every 
general reasonable way towards helping for- 
ward the cause of righteousness. The liter- 
ary work he then held more or less clearly 
in vision, for which his education and in- 
stincts had long been directly and indirectly 
preparing him, and for which in large part 
he was to travel, was to be only another form 
of contribution to the service of God and 



64 Sumner Ellis. 

humanity. He could have done nothing out- 
side the orbit of divine, universal Love, — 
nothing but would have told deeply in this 
harmoniously powerful way for the good of 
the world. 

It was during the early part of this minis- 
try, Feb. 5, 1883, that he was united in mar- 
riage with Mrs. Addie M. Hall, — a woman 
of culture and refinement, one of the most 
devoted members of St. Paul's Church, and 
much interested in the best progress of Chi- 
cago. Their mutual friends everywhere re- 
joiced anew in the Father by whose mercies 
broken lives may again find strength and joy 
in congenial, closely united hearts. Before 
starting abroad, among the last things done 
by Dr. and Mrs. Ellis was the making of a 
generous selection from their books and 
sending them to the library of Lombard 
University. Since then, Mrs. Ellis has gath- 
ered from the Doctors library a liberal num- 
ber and given them to the same institution, — 
including British poets, Bible commentaries, 
Greek and Hebrew books, other works on 
theology and abstruse scientific themes, such 



Sumner Ellis. 65 

as Darwinism and metaphysics. But it is 
not intended to indicate that these four hun- 
dred and more volumes include his library. 
Dr. Ellis was a life member of the Art Insti- 
tute of Chicago, in which he felt great inter- 
est; and he anticipated the time would come 
when he should use his influence especially 
towards its advancement. Love of beauty in 
nature, literature, and art, so long growing 
with his growth, had reached a high degree 
of perfection. 

September 7, 1884, Dr. and Mrs. Ellis left 
Chicago for New York; and on the 10th they 
embarked on the Cunard steamer Gallia for 
Europe. No man ever wrote a finer descrip- 
tion of a sea-voyage. In ten days they landed 
in Liverpool. Mrs. Ellis had travelled much 
in foreign lands, and both were well read in 
books that related to the purposes of their 
journey. They knew what they wanted to 
do, and how to do it. They were there with 
the definite object of studying only that which 
does not exist in our own country, — save 
Nature, which is a daily study to all lovers 
of her moods, whether at home or abroad. 

5 



66 Sumner Ellis. 

Unlike many American travellers, they had no 
morbid curiosity to see everything, — good, 
bad, and indifferent. The English Lake district 
gave Dr. Ellis much pleasure, from the beauty 
of the scenery, the variety and brightness of 
the coloring, and the association of the Lake 
Poets. They made a point of stopping at all 
cathedral towns ; and he admired and often 
spoke of the Carlisle Cathedral window as 
unique among windows. Edinburgh, so beau- 
tiful for situation, so classical in its architect- 
ure, was very inviting to their scholarly 
pursuits. The cathedral town of Durham 
was a place of great interest to them, as the 
Norman architecture there is undoubtedly the 
best in the world. In London they lived in 
the British Museum, South Kensington, and 
the National Gallery, — all art. Westminster 
Abbey seemed somewhat tame and disap- 
pointing to him, after seeing other cathedrals. 
They heard several of the most eminent 
preachers, but liked best of all the poetical 
and thoroughly religious sermons of Stop- 
ford A. Brooke. 

Thus everywhere the situation, natural 



Sumner Ellis. 67 

scenery, architecture, paintings, and statuary 
were the special objects which claimed the 
attention of these travellers, until they arrived 
in Rome and Southern Italy. Statuary and 
the Greek temples then seemed to become 
the themes most inviting to Dr. Ellis. After 
visiting the Greek remains of Southern Italy 
and Sicily, and crossing over into Greece, as 
the glories of ancient Greece unfolded before 
them it became a puzzling question whether 
to settle to serious work in a few directions, or 
take only a cursory view. They determined 
upon the latter course, — he hoping to return 
after having studied for a particular work ; but 
both afterwards regretted that they had not 
lingered. The trip through Germany had for 
its object mainly the art works. They were 
greatly delighted with Munich, — mediaeval 
somewhat in its architecture, where Grecian 
is not imitated, having little commerce, much 
art and much music, and is animated by the 
presence of scholars and soldiers. There they 
revelled in music, to appreciate which their 
whole lives had prepared them, and they were 
fortunate in hearing the " Nibelung Ring," 



68 Sumner Ellis. 

and other works of Wagner. They felt that 
of all German cities Munich was the one in 
which music was most conscientiously ren- 
dered. They were surprised that so many 
Americans rush through that city, finding so 
little to enjoy. In Switzerland they passed 
their time in the secluded, sublime spots, 
thoroughly in communion with Nature. 

All in all, it is impossible to conceive how 
Dr. Ellis could have used the last seventeen 
months of his life in more fitting prepara- 
tion for the glories of the future. His inten- 
tion upon returning home was to pursue a 
course of study whereby he might treat the 
origin of the myths of the Greek religion, 
especially the divinities, satyrs, fauns ; their 
characteristics, the degradation of their at- 
tributes by after ages, and the representation 
of all these in art, — particularly the glyptic 
art. Also it was his desire to write lectures 
on literature ; and no one knowing him ques- 
tioned his ability for this work. Statuary was 
a newer thought and a fresher study with him ; 
but he seemed to have an innate conception of 
its beauties. He had a better eye for form than 



Sumner Ellis. 69 

for color ; therefore he inclined more to Greek 
art than mediaeval. When abroad, Dr. Ellis 
wrote twenty-eight long letters for the Press 
of his denomination in Chicago. They were 
mostly from points of greatest interest in his 
travels, and all were marked by freshness of 
style and originality in treatment of the sub- 
jects. When his hurried pen left them, they 
w r ere in readiness for a better book than most 
of the best volumes published from foreign 
travellers. One at all appreciative of his 
pleasures and studies could not fail to be 
amazed that he wrote so much and so charm- 
ingly; while those of his friends who were 
favored with personal letters, received rare 
manifestations of his delicate style, the exqui- 
site graces of which were attractively embel- 
lished and sweetened by his direct touch. 
" These are splendid opportunities for rich 
progress, " he wrote, " and most delightful 
social life. ,, He was finding himself at 
every step ; the spell to get and to give was 
on him ! Was his spirit already loosening 
"from its earthly moorings"? Surely his 
sight was receiving its last anointings below 



jo Sumner Ellis. 

for the mount of God and the galleries of 
eternity. 

Returning to their native country, Dr. and 
Mrs. Ellis landed in New York on the 14th of 
December, 1885. That evening he was a guest 
of the Universalist Club of the Metropolis. 
" He did not plan to speak; but being called 
upon, he rose and gave such graceful speech 
as only he could give, on the divine use of 
beauty in spiritual growth." They reached 
Chicago on the 18th. They attended church 
at St. Paul's, and were on all sides most warmly 
welcomed home. They visited relatives of Mrs. 
Ellis in the country, and they arranged for a 
temporary residence in the city, — intending 
to build a home the coming summer. On the 
14th of January, 1886, he promised to preach 
in one of the suburbs, " all for love," the fol- 
lowing Sunday. On Friday, the 15th, he 
wrote to Edwin Ellis. Very nearly or quite 
up to that time, he seemed in perfect health. 
But he had preached his last sermon eighteen 
months before, and he never wrote again. 
That last letter to a very dear brother was 
singularly communicative and tender, and 



Sumner Ellis. 7 1 

near its close he wrote : " I am now reading 
a pile of books I got in Paris and London, 
and am having a leisure for reading I never 
had before. I hope something will come of 
the opportunity in due time ; yet the seed I 
am sowing may all die in the ground." Be- 
fore Sunday he was too sick to leave his 
room, and the disease soon developed into 
deadly typhoid pneumonia. At times he suf- 
fered intensely; at others he seemed free from 
pain ; and so far as possible, he made full 
arrangements for his funeral and burial ser- 
vices. " When he was looking on the light of 
the last Sunday morning he ever beheld on 
earth, sick and suffering though he was, he 
found strength to exclaim, 1 What a beautiful 
tint there is in the air ! ' " and when he was 
told he was going, he said, " So soon ! " He 
drew his final breath a little before noon, on 
Tuesday, the 26th. The greater the soul, the 
greater the idea of immortality. The last 
twelve days of his life were the grandest. 
He fully exemplified his Christian faith, 
proved his belief in immortality by his desire 
to live if possible, — for he had much to live 



7 2 Sumner Ellis. 

for; if not, it would be just as well: no 
anxiety, it would be life, whether here or 
there. His death was beautiful, like his life, — 
no frown, no pang ; simply the breathing of 
his spirit out into the kingdom of perfect light 
and beauty, ever-growing love and life. His 
belief in immortality has helped many; his 
manner of dying made those who saw him 
and were nearest and dearest to him feel they 
too could die triumphantly. 

The words uttered at memorial and funeral 
services that were reported, and the tributes 
which were printed within three weeks after 
Dr. Ellis's life ebbed away to the eternal 
abodes, are more than the writer's in this 
memorial. The day after his departure, the 
Sabbath-School Union of Boston and vicinity, 
of which he had been an officer and active 
member, was in session at the Shawmut 
Church. The evening of Wednesday, the 
27th of January, the services were wholly 
memorial for him. Familiar hymns were 
sung; the Rev. R. T. Polk led the prayers; a 
comprehensive and appropriate resolution was 
adopted; and addresses were made by lay- 



Sumner Ellis. 73 

men, Messrs. Charles Caverly and J. D. W. 
Joy, and by the Rev. Drs. C. W. Biddle, G. L. 
Demarest, and G. H c Emerson, — all tender 
words of former parishioners and personal 
friends, and highly appreciative. The next day 
deeply impressive funeral services were held 
in St. Paul's Church, Chicago. The choir ren- 
dered helpful music ; the Rev. J. C. Adams and 
the Rev. Dr. W. H. Ryder read and prayed, 
and both made very fitting addresses, between 
which an extract from a thoughtful and affec- 
tionate letter from the Rev. Dr. H. W. Thomas 
was read. Saturday, the 30th, a thousand 
miles from those scenes, services were ren- 
dered at Athol, Massachusetts, in the home 
of Edwin Ellis, by the choir of the Athol 
Congregationalist Church and the pastor, the 
Rev. Mr. Stebbins, by the Rev. Messrs. C. R. 
Moor and G 0 L. Perin, and President E. H. 
Capen, D. D., — all full of love and trust. 
The burial was late that afternoon, in the 
cemetery at North Orange, where reposes 
the dust of Dr. Ellis's parents and of many 
other relatives, and where years ago he pre- 
pared a lot, placed a monument, and buried 



74 Sumner Ellis. 

the form of the wife of his youth. On the 
following Monday, at the Boston Ministers' 
Meeting, a minute of true analysis and com- 
mendation was adopted, and remarks were 
made by the Rev. Messrs. Bush, Gardiner, 
Harman, Hill, Moor, Skinner, Smith, Start, 
Whitney, and by the Rev. Drs. Capen, Flan- 
ders, and Miner. Then followed editorial trib- 
utes from the Rev. I. J. Mead and from the 
Rev. Drs. Emerson, Cantwell, Atwood, Gun- 
nison, and Mrs. J. L. Patterson, with contri- 
butions from the Rev. Drs. Lee and O. F. 
Safford, and others. Many preachers have 
drawn lessons from his life in their sermons ; 
and the Rev. A. J. Patterson, D.D., is known 
to have devoted much of a discourse to his 
characteristics. The author of this memorial 
has wished to place with it some further 
words of others concerning our friend ; but 
it is difficult to select from so much, where 
all is so good. He considers those on the 
following pages a fitting close. 



Sumner Ellis. 



75 



TRIBUTES OF FRIENDS. 

FROM the many expressions of respect and 
esteem at the memorial service of the Sab- 
bath-School Union in Boston we make the 
following selections. 

Mr. CAVERLY said : — 

" Never was there a purer, a more unselfish, a 
more conscientious minister. The young people 
were devoted to him, and he led them in the right 
way, and under his influence they became workers 
in the church. We all loved him." 

Mr. JOY remarked : — 

" Others may speak of his literary abilities, which 
were very marked, of his methods as an earnest 
student, and of his varied accomplishments ; but I 
prefer to talk of him as my chosen friend and com- 
panion, as the Christian gentleman whom we may 
delight to emulate, as a loyal member of our church 
wherever and under whatever circumstances he 
lived ; and we may point with great satisfaction 
to his life as an illustration of what Universalist 
Christianity will make of the earnest and sincere 
man." 



76 



Sumner Ellis. 



Dr. BlDDLE spoke thus : — 

"He possessed a rare ability to draw out and 
use the talents of the people in different depart- 
ments of Christian work. More recent years con- 
firmed my acquaintance with Dr. Ellis, as he had 
been for a considerable time a resident of Cam- 
bridge and an inmate in one of the families of my 
parish. It was in that home that he prepared the 
Life of Dr. Chapin. During that time he was some- 
times heard in the North Cambridge pulpit, and 
often took part in the social praise meetings. His 
fine literary style, his apt illustrations, his philo- 
sophical frame of mind, his deep intellectual and 
spiritual insight were much admired and enjoyed. 
His greatness of heart and mind drew r about him 
persons of refinement and intelligence." 

Dr. DEMAREST said : — 

" His example may properly be commended not 
only to other clergymen, but also to the laymen of 
our church. Previous speakers have referred to 
the attachment of young people to Dr. Ellis. 
Such attachments are an important factor in the 
future of the Universalist Church. Every minister 
needs to attract that element ; and his real success 
may be measured by the strength of youthful attach- 
ment, — an attachment which shall not be merely 



Sumner Ellis. 77 

personal, but shall extend through the minister to 
the Church itself." 

Dr. Emerson remarked : — 

" It was needless to say that he knew him as a 
Christian gentleman without a flaw in his character. 
If ever man was made of glass, it was he ; he could 
be seen in every motive of his soul and deed. His 
character transparent, was obvious at sight ; it 
never had a blot. He was a man of the higher 
intellect, — he had intuition, the spiritual insight. 
He was a delighful companion. It was a happiness 
to walk with him upon the street, by the seashore, 
upon hills, and in the woods. Dr. Ellis has made 
very substantial and durable contributions to the lit- 
erature, the strength, and the prestige of our general 
Church. He is entitled to his monument; that 
monument is his praise in all our churches." 

From the many utterances at the funeral in 
Chicago, we take these. 
Mr. Adams said : — 

" His was one of those fine and noble natures, 
born of the Holy Spirit, whose preparations are 
always made, and whose record must ever be full of 
honor and of blessing, whenever he should go. 
And dear as life was to him, with the ever-freshen- 
ing ambitions which he entertained, and the new 
projects he was meditating, I can have no manner 



78 Sumner Ellis. 

of doubt that on the other side there are labors 
inviting his hands, and new studies ready for his 
eager mind. 

" I find myself drawn inevitably to the terms of 
eulogy in speaking of this man. He was one of 
whom the words of praise came naturally and in- 
stinctively. His pure spirit shone in his face. His 
Christian faith spoke itself in all his words. His 
Christian insight made him see the bright, and the 
hopeful, and the beautiful side of life. His exqui- 
site refinement governed every thought and every 
sense. Who of us will ever forget the words he 
spoke to us in our little meeting a few weeks ago, 
and all the broad catholicity there was in it, the 
charity for men's opinions, the unswerving trust in 
the final conquest of the truth. It was a delight 
and a blessing to listen to him. For his words 
came out of his life, and his life came out cf his 
soul, and his soul was always true to the spirit of his 
Master. The spirit of his life might be put in the 
phrase with which he christened one of the children 
of his pen, 'At Our Best.' In all he did, in every 
contact with his fellows, he strove to be at his best." 

Dr. Ryder is reported to have closed his 
address with these words : — 

"The speaker then asked if among those who 
had heard the deceased preach so often, there was 



Sumner Ellis. 79 

not an appeal for right living and consecration ; if 
they did not hear a voice saying, ' What you do, do 
quickly.' Did not all have something to learn? 
Were there not some young people present upon 
whom he had urged consecration and usefulness, 
who could now declare, 6 As for me, I pledge myself 
to loyalty in the service of my Master, and put away 
the follies of life ! ' Out of that casket came that 
appeal, as it came urgently from the lips of a man 
who tried to live the life of a Christian gentleman." 

Dr. THOMAS, unable to accept an invitation 
to be present at these services, sent a letter, 
from which Mr. ADx\MS read the following 
extract : — 

" There are no words of appreciation, of sym- 
pathy, of hope, that I would not gladly utter at the 
last rites of one whom I have known so well as a 
brother in the ministry, and loved so dearly as a de- 
voted friend. For years we were together in study, 
in work, in sorrow, and in joy. I never knew a 
better man. There was not a flaw nor speck in his 
noble and transparent soul. 

" Gentle, unobtrusive, kind, and helpful, he was 
loved by all. His fine culture, deep piety, and 
great and generous love for man as man, and his 
unwavering faith in God and the final triumph of 
good over evil, made his ministry and his life a 



8o 



Sumner Ellis. 



blessing to any church or community. His unex- 
pected death, when as yet in the fulness of his 
power as a writer and a preacher, is a great loss not 
only to the Universalist Church, but to our city and 
to the common cause of religion. 

" We must believe that the universal is necessary, 
and the necessary right. Death is universal ; hence 
it is necessary, and therefore it cannot be wrong. 
It is race-destiny ; it is God's appointment ; it is a 
release from pain, a birth into a higher life. Be- 
lieving this, we will think of our dear brother and 
friend, not as dead, but alive, — absent from us, but 
present with the Lord. Oh ! how often have we 
talked and thought and sung of the land that is 
better, of the many mansions in Our Father's 
house, of the home to which he has gone, — the 
home where we shall meet again ! " 

These are words from some of the other 
tributes ; Dr. GuxxiSOX wrote : — 

" He was the most gentlemanly of men, and in 
the hour of largest forgetfulness he was never 
coarse, for there was no coarseness in him. He 
had great capacity for friendship, and loved his 
friends with a passionate idolatry. In all our walks 
together, he never spoke ill of any. but seemed to 
have the largest charity for the frailties of men. 
He used to talk to us of his friend Dr. Thomas, of 



Sutnner Ellis. 



81 



Chicago, and prized most highly his friendship with 
him, and he desired that we should know him ; so 
did he believe that we should love the friend he 
loved. He was not old,, by any means, and yet he 
had an old man's love of the friends of boyhood. 
He used often to tell of the old woods of his early 
home, the sports he had, and the friends that he 
enjoyed ; and though each day brought new ac- 
quaintances, he kept remembrance of the old, and 
loved to tell of those who all the way back to his 
earliest ministry had sat beneath his teaching. " 

Dr. Patterson said : — 

" Dr. Ellis was a welcome preacher in all our 
pulpits East and West. Few preachers were more 
widely known or more tenderly beloved. Whether 
carrying the cares of a large church or enjoying 
an interval of respite from pastoral duties, he was 
always the diligent, painstaking student. His style 
as a writer was peculiarly original, chaste, and re- 
fined ; but its spiritual insight is its special charm. 
I remember well the first article, or rather sermon, 
which I ever saw from his pen. It was on 6 Spirit- 
ual Discernment.' He made the truth as clear as 
sunlight, that we see more with the mental than with 
the physical vision, more with the spiritual than with 
the intellectual. He was through life a fitting illus- 
tration of his theme. He knew Nature, God, man, 

6 



82 



Sumner Ellis. 



duty, immortality, through the senses less than by 
the soul. He lived as seeing him who is invisible ; 
and he grew year by year, in person, in culture, in 
character, more refined, more charming, more 
rounded and perfected, as a disciple of Christ and 
a son of God." 

Dr. Cantwell wrote : — 

"He was a true Knight of the Cross, bearing 
ever ' the white banner of a blameless life.' He 
was everywhere recognized as a man utterly re- 
moved by nature from all that was ignoble or un- 
worthy. His refinement shone on his face, was 
seen in his clear-cut features, and heard in the very 
tones of his voice. We remember how loyal and 
steadfast Dr. Ellis has been in the service of our 
Church ; how he has honored his calling as a min- 
ister, serving the Church with the preacher's ripe 
and cultivated gifts and the pastor's earnest fidelity. 
On every occasion when his help was needed for 
denominational work, it was cheerfully forthcoming. 
By his pen he has enriched our Press and added 
honor to our literature. He brought to the work 
of the ministry noble aims and purposes. Many 
of our younger men have caught inspiration from 
his example, and been strengthened in their efforts 
for a better culture through his instrumentality. 
The life of our Church is deeper and richer in all 



Sumner Ellis. 83 

vital departments of our work, now that this man 
has lived and labored and passed on to his eternal 
rest. The affectionate esteem in which the Church 
will cherish his memory will be evidence in coming 
years of what he has done for it." 

This is Dr. ATWOOD's paragraph : — 

" With surprise and sharp pain we learn of the 
sudden death of our greatly esteemed brother, Dr. 
Sumner Ellis. Apart from the sense of personal 
loss, we deplore his departure as a bereavement of 
our whole Church. A rare and delicate spirit, with 
a physical and intellectual organism nicely adjusted 
to its fine intuitions, — eye and voice and hand 
telling at once the story of the gentle and sus- 
ceptible soul behind ; quickly responsive to all 
the melody, beauty, truth around, yet just enough 
distrustful of himself to hold him back from full 
enthusiasm ; critical, choice in his tastes, a Greek 
in his intellectual sympathies, but a modern and an 
American in the breadth of his moral affections ; 
useful as a minister, admired as a literary artist, 
beloved as an unspotted and amiable man, yet, 
because his sensibilities were so keen and his ideals 
so high, never satisfied with himself, — such was 
Sumner Ellis ; one of the best exponents our 
Church has had of the happy union of culture 
and faith." 



8 4 



Sumner Ellis. 



And this is the substance of the " minute " 
prepared by President Capen and adopted 
by the Ministers' Meeting of Boston : — 

"This meeting would make record of its sense 
of loss in the death at Chicago, Illinois, on January 
26, of Sumner Ellis, D.D. Dr. Ellis was born in 
Massachusetts, and the greater part of his ministerial 
work was done within the limits of this Common- 
wealth, though he had held successful pastorates in 
the West. His whole life was a contribution to the 
cause in which he labored. Beginning with limited 
advantages for an education, he made such diligent 
use of the opportunities afforded him that he very 
early won a reputation for careful, painstaking, 
methodical, and scholarly habits, of thinking and 
working. The fruit of these habits, early acquired 
and persistently cultivated to the end of his life^ was 
apparent throughout his ministerial career. As a 
writer he was characterized by good taste and sound 
judgment in the selection and arrangement of his 
materials, by clearness of statement and by force 
and frequently beauty of expression, by the fresh- 
ness and vigor of his thought, and by sincerity and 
earnestness of purpose. The order of his mind 
was not theological, but philosophical, ethical, and 
practical. In his pulpit efforts, therefore, he ap- 
peared to be the teacher, the counsellor, the wise 
friend, rather than the pulpit orator. He was modest, 



Sumner Ellis. 85 

simple, unaffected, genial, and buoyant in his tem- 
perament, and all the movements of his mind were 
guided by a clear, strong, cheerful, and courageous 
faith. These qualities not only made his personality 
unique, but drew men to him with irresistible force. 
His friendships were warm and lasting, and his in- 
fluence, especially upon young men, was wholesome 
and durable. Few men in the Universalis t ministry 
could leave behind a wider circle of those who 
would feel a personal bereavement in their death. 
Our brother did an important and a noble work, 
the memorials of which will remain when all of us 
are dust." 



I. 

THE UNIVERSAL INTUITION. 



FAITH AND RIGHTEOUSNESS. 



I. 

The Universal Intuition. 

As seeing Him who is invisible. — Hebrews xi 27. 

HERE are two paths leading from 
man to his Maker. These are Logic 
and Intuition; or, as they are some- 
times called, Reasoning and Feeling. Along 
the first the intellect moves ; along the second 
the heart makes its shorter and more direct 
journey. The first is the way of argument, 
and builds on the premise of a manifest in- 
telligence and love in Nature, — the great con- 
clusion that there is a power above us and 
around us, which we rightly name Deity. 
The second is the way of experience, along 
which it is claimed that the sense of the 
divine is an actual finding of a Deity, an 




90 Faith and Righteousness. 

immediate spiritual discernment, more or less 
distinct, of the Light within the light. 

It is of this path of experience, or intuition, 
that I shall speak at the present time, hoping 
to show that it leads, not through a realm of 
fiction, where things are not what they seem, 
but rather amid a scenery as real as land and 
water present to the outward eye. I hope to 
make it appear that this universal sense of 
God, which we call an intuition, is a fit foun- 
dation on which to erect the temple of Faith, 
within whose sacred walls we all would dwell 
from day to day, and find needed shelter in 
the dark hours of life. 

Let us seek first a clear understanding of 
this term intuition. Already I have used the 
" sense of the divine/' as its synonym. Web- 
ster defines it as " a direct apprehension or 
cognition ; an act of immediate knowledge." 
Coleridge calls it " a direct beholding; " and 
Cousin, the French philosopher, in full ac- 
cord with both, says, " My intuition is my 
looking upon reality." As methods of proof, 
logic and intuition differ as outward authority 
differs from experience. In the one case, 



The Universal Intuition. 91 

proof is formal, and in the other it is experi- 
mental. Thus the logician affirms the reality 
of a Divine Being because a conclusive chain 
of argument reaches that lofty goal ; but the 
intuitionalist affirms that there is a Deity be- 
cause he has a sense of his presence, and is 
conscious of inspirations derived from him. 
The former believes since he confides, as well 
he may, in logic, for logic marching steadily 
from premise to conclusion is indeed ma- 
jestic, and worthy of reverence and trust ; but 
the latter believes since he confides in his ex- 
perience. In some happy hour he has felt the 
impress of a Divinity ; in some darker moment 
a light has shone upon him ; in some great 
silence his inner listening has heard a voice 
not of earth. Like Enoch, he has now and 
then, along some rare eminence, walked with 
God as in a sacred companionship ; like Job, 
he has held high converse with him ; or like 
Jesus, he has realized a oneness of spirit with 
spirit And by reason of this intuition, Belief 
has come to take up her abode with him and 
cheer him on his way, putting a song in his 
heart, a moral courage in his career, and light- 



92 Faith and Righteousness. 

ing his path through this life and beyond with 
the radiance of a great hope. Thus from the 
stem of Feeling, Faith blooms and bears her 
gracious fruits. As an antidote to scepticism, 
Tennyson tells us how befriending is this 
sense of the Deity, — 

" If e'er, when Faith had fallen asleep, 
I heard a voice, 1 Believe no more,' 
And heard an ever-breaking shore 
That tumbled in the Godless deep ; 

14 A warmth within the breast would melt 
The freezing reason's colder part, 
And like a man in wrath the heart 
Stood up and answered, ' I have felt.' " 

Because he had felt t therefore he paused at 
the thought of atheism. He could not dis- 
credit the witness of his soul, that seemed at 
times to meet and greet a spirit in Nature and 
in life, and to hold a high communion. In all 
beauty he had discovered a hidden Artist. In 
his sorrow he had known a higher sympathy. 
In his aspirations he had received the aid of 
an Inspirer, and an Approver of his nobler 
deeds was ever near. And on this experience 
he rested his heart in the sweet trust that 



The Universal Intuition. 93 

there is a God, and that there is a care and 
guidance, and a " far-off, divine event, to 
which the whole creation moves. " 

On a similar ground have countless souls 
besides the English laureate reared the fair 
temple of Faith. Alike have poets and saints 
trusted in their vivid sense of the divine as 
something that pointed to a reality. In that 
great Wesleyan movement, a mighty wave of 
spiritual awakening, there was realized a wide 
arrest of doubt, and a broad reign of faith. 
While Bishop Butler opened the logical path 
to Deity, Wesley invited his pilgrims to enter 
the experimental one ; and thus at once short- 
ened the search and rendered it more suc- 
cessful. In feeling he recognized the natural 
prelude to believing. In like manner did 
George Fox seek to lead his disciples into the 
radiance of an inner quickening and illumina- 
tion, wherein the face and favor of a present 
Deity would shine forth ; and sitting in that 
revealing light, the Friends have been noted 
as much for the absence of scepticism and the 
joy of a real faith, as for their virtue and hu- 
manity. To them belief has been as natural 



94 Faith and Righteousness. 

as a song to the attuned heart of a bird. Of 
their spiritual experience a trust and peace 
have sprung, which their own poets have set 
in well-known hymns. 

But in all the ages it has been, not the sway 
of logic, but the sense of the soul, the spirit- 
ual feeling, that has set the masses in the atti- 
tude of confidence towards the unseen world. 
Intuition has been not only the Tennysonian 
and Wesleyan prelude to believing, but even 
the entire human music of faith has thus its 
first note in the deeper realm of experience ; 
and so in China and India and Egypt and 
Greece and Rome and England and Amer- 
ica the altars of religion have been mostly set 
up in the name of an inner perception of a 
spiritual environment. The rude Indian has 
seen God in the cloud or heard him in the 
wind, has caught his smile in the summer 
sunshine or met his frown in the passing sha- 
dow, and paused to pay him some form of 
worship. But the soul of a Plato or Thomas 
a Kempis or Channing has only been cog- 
nizant of a higher range of spiritual lights, and 
felt more sensibly the impress of a Universal 



The Universal Intuition. 95 

Spirit; and so in the common name of expe- 
rience — common to barbarian and civilized 
— these greater souls say their prayers and 
chant their psalms to the Great Unseen. 

And now we pass to the most important 
part of our discussion; namely, an inquiry 
into the value of this intuition as an evidence 
of the spiritual environment to which it points. 
In other words, is there sufficient ground for 
putting our trust in it as the witness of a great 
fact; namely, a Divinity in Nature and in the 
sphere of human life? Is this spiritual sense 
a mirror that reflects nothing, projecting out of 
itself its own images, or does it reveal an actual 
spiritual scenery? Is there a God because we 
feel his spirit in communion with ours ; or is 
the feeling all there is in the matter, and be- 
yond us lies the great void and the eternal si- 
lence, with only our phantasy projected into it? 
To this inquiry let us now address ourselves. 

Man shares three orders of perceptions. 
The first order are sense-perceptions, taking 
cognizance of matter and its phenomena. 
Man sees an outward world. He sees the 
earth at his feet and the cloud overhead, and 



96 Faith and Righteousness. 

his vision stretches out to the stars. He sees 
the properties of bodies, — length, breadth, 
and thickness, — and their many conformations 
and colors. He sees the plant and the tree, 
the bird, the animal, and the members of his 
own race. He hears sounds. He detects fra- 
grance, and he also discovers flavors. These 
are called " sense-perceptions." 

The second order are mind-perceptions, 
taking cognizance of ideas, truths, and princi- 
ples. Man recognizes a realm of intellections, 
in which are included simple ideas and com- 
plex ideas, or ideas in their relations. He 
sees the elements of numbers, and the princi- 
ples of morals. He looks upon the verities 
of philosophy, and the abstractions of meta- 
physics. These are called " mind-perceptions." 

The third order are soul-perceptions, taking 
cognizance of God and a spiritual sphere. 
Of these I have already spoken at length; 
and now I set the three orders together, since 
I desire to show that the analogies between 
them as to their origin and scope are such as 
to confer on them an equal validity as evi- 
dence of the reality of the objects to which 



The Universal Intuition. 97 

they point. In the consciousness of man the 
sense-perceptions and the mind-perceptions 
and the soul-perceptions assume a common 
rank as elements of experience. Equally cer- 
tain are we that we share them all. Together 
they file through the inner life, appearing as 
common factors of our being. Now the senses 
may be busy in their office; and now the 
mind is active in its sphere; and now the 
soul comes to the front, and adores and loves 
and answers back to the celestial appeals : and 
what I claim is that, accepting the first and 
second of these orders of perceptions as reve- 
lations of their respective objects, we have 
no good reason for rejecting the third as not 
being a faithful witness. Hence the proof of 
an outward world, and of a realm of ideas, 
and of a Deity, rests on much the same 
ground ; namely, the common veracity of our 
three orders of perceptions. If two parts of 
our being are trustworthy, we need not dis- 
trust the third and crowning portion, that 
perceives a spiritual Presence, and knows a 
Life that is in all that the senses perceive 
and the mind contemplates. Man is not such 

7 ' 



98 Faith and Righteousness. 

a contradiction that two orders of his percep- 
tions are habitually truthful, and a third order 
is universally false, though it be of transcend- 
ent significance. His nature is better bal- 
anced and more homogeneous ; and hence 
while we confess there is the world of matter 
which he perceives, and the sphere of truth 
and philosophy on which he gazes, let us 
follow with all confidence his spiritual foot- 
steps that lead us to a Divinity, an immortality, 
and a final perfection, 

But note one point more with reference to 
these several orders of perception. Whence 
come they in the consciousness of man? How 
can we account for their origin? They ail 
seem alike to be caused or occasioned by 
external realities, and not to be self-generated, 
They transpire under the action of the exter- 
nal upon the internal. Thus the flower, or 
the tree, or the star, awakens the perception 
of a rose, or an oak, or a planet flaming in 
the evening sky. The mountain begets the 
sense of an eminence, and the vale of a de- 
pression, in the landscape. The cloud in the 
sky floats before the vision, and the eye pro- 



The Universal Intuition. 99 

ceeds to take note of the shape and color, 
and assigns it to one group or another of the 
forms that make up the cloud-realm. First 
is the scenery of Nature, and afterwards the 
perception of it. The objects produce the 
subjective sense of them. And thus depend- 
ent are the mind-perceptions on the reality of 
truths and principles ; for no one will claim 
that it creates these. Rather, truths and 
principles being eternal, and in all the uni- 
verse alike, the mind is awakened by their 
presence as the sleeper by the light of the 
morning sun. And we have no reason to 
think otherwise of the soul-perceptions, than 
that they are the effects of a spiritual environ- 
ment resting upon the soul and moving it to 
response. They are not self-generated, for 
so at least does the analogy of the perceptions 
declare, and so does consciousness affirm ; but 
rather are they caused, and their cause can be 
none other than a Divinity touching them by 
his nearness, and inspiring them by his grace. 

But observe one test more of the value of 
the spiritual intuition as evidence of the Deity 
to which it points. It is a universal sense; 



ioo Faith and Righteousness. 

and every universal sense is thus far proved 
to be truthful in its deliverance, unless this 
one is an exception, which we have no reason 
to think. We can have no better witness 
than a universal sense-perception or a uni- 
versal mind-perception. This is admitted on 
all sides. The individual sense in regard to 
any given object in the world of Nature may 
be at fault ; it may be the victim of some illu- 
sion, and thus render a false report. In the 
eye there may be a defect, and the thing that 
seems is not, or is not what it seems. Thus 
the single vision may err. But we have a 
remedy, and that is the aggregate of sensa- 
tions or beholdings ; for these are absolutely 
reliable. The testimony of one to the color 
of the grass or the sky might well be dis- 
trusted; but when a race tells us with a 
marked unanimity that the grass is green and 
the sky blue, there is nothing more to be said : 
it must be so. One might mistake in his 
account of the form of an object, since one 
may be deceived ; but ten pairs of eyes could 
hardly be confused on this question of shape, 
and the universal sense of mankind would be 



The Universal Intuition. 101 

reliable to the utmost. Hence we conclude 
there are the stars in the sky, not merely be- 
cause our own eyes tell us so, but because 
the vision of humanity is in perfect accord on 
this matter. And in like manner are the uni- 
versal mind-perceptions found to be true to 
the facts; or, as the common saying runs, 
"What everybody says, must be so." One 
man may err on a simple proposition in math- 
ematics ; but a second man might set him 
right, — a thousand men surely would do so. 
The judgments of the race are final because 
truthful. When humanity comes to a common 
verdict, it will never be outgrown or altered, 
since it will be the deliverance of a verity. 

But if such credit belongs to the universal 
sense-perceptions and the universal mind- 
perceptions, then may we not confide in the 
universal soul-perceptions, which on the score 
of analogy should give us a just reflection of 
the truths of a spiritual realm? Of the three 
orders of universal perceptions, is it reason- 
able that two should be uniformly reliable, 
and the third uniformly untrustworthy? Nay, 
there is no reason in such a supposition. The 



102 Faith and Righteousness. 

consistency of the universe is against it. The 
harmony of the great whole is against it. 
The integrity of human nature is against it. 
And hence we may well give full credit to 
the universal sense of a Divine Power above 
and around man, and which assumes to his 
spirit the shape of a wise and kind Provi- 
dence. The wide intuition must point to a 
reality. The whole race does not, with one 
ardent consent, adore a void, nor rest its 
heart on a phantasy ; but by its universal soul- 
perception it must indeed see " Him who is 
invisible. " This intuitive recognition of a 
God is the most majestic and transforming 
sentiment of human life, and in its universality 
we may find its verity. 

Yes, we feel the Divinity; and therefore let 
us confide in it, and pay court to it, and as- 
pire to a oneness with it, and render to it our 
daily service. And from that altitude of life 
we can each one sing with the poet, — 

" My willing soul would stay- 
in such a frame as this, 
And sit and sing herself away 
To everlasting bliss." 



II. 

THE INCARNATION A NECESSITY. 



II. 



The Incarnation a Necessity. 

And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us. — John i. 14. 




jHEOLOGIANS have striven hard to 
reflect the meaning of this term, 
"Word." To say that a library has 
been written upon the " proem," or preface 
to John's Gospel, would be to keep within 
the bounds of truth. Now, looking at this 
term, as of course I must, with my own in- 
sight, I am impelled to adopt as its closest 
synonym and best parallel, the w r ord "God; " 
and in this I am borne out by Scripture state- 
ment, direct and indirect. " In the begin- 
ning was the Word," says John ; and w r hat 
more? "And the Word was with God, and 
the Word was God." And it is a plain im- 
plication, on almost every page of the New 
Testament, that in Jesus dwelt the Father; 



106 Faith and Righteousness. 

that in him was "the fulness of the Godhead," 
— »the fulness in the sense that every attribute 
and disposition, every essential trait, the total 
elements of the Divine character, the Alpha 
and Omega, the beginning and the end, were 
given place and power in the Son of God. 
" The Word was God," and " the Word was 
made flesh, and dwelt among us." The high- 
est spirit became incarnate. The Divine 
gathered itself up, and passed from its veil- 
ings into this human embodiment, to the end 
that it might be recognized among men. 
The Infinite Light, so vast it could not be 
seen, outlying the sweep of the eye, and there- 
fore lost, was concentrated into this Star, 
this bright Nazarene, to be reflected upon all 
eyes. The Life, a sea without a shore, all 
centre and all circumference, all-abounding 
and all-including, manifold, universal, pro- 
jected itself, sent itself out, worded itself, in a 
finite form, as a drop of water from the ocean, 
or from the hidden mist above your heads, 
would typify the universe of water. 

The Word, then, is characteristically God. 
Jesus is the Divine Man. He is the visible 



The Incarnation a Necessity. 107 

type of the Invisible Presence. He is the 
special set in front of the universal, — one in 
quality, and representative of God. 

I have said the Infinite is vast, and there- 
fore illusive. We fail to grasp it. It plays 
beyond our sight. A few great and general- 
izing minds have indeed touched it and dwelt 
in rapture on their vision ; but to the masses 
it has been a far-off and vague attraction, 
something they could not find, something 
they could not cease to search for, — a hiding 
glory, yet luring by its enchanting mystery ; 
a something dreamed of, but not discovered. 
And so there was need of the incarnation, 
among the great mass of mankind, to secure 
a first clear conception and sense of the true 
Godhead. Only thus would the hidden be 
clearly and successfully revealed. 

But let me say, further, that the incarnation 
is not only a primal, but a continual need 
with us. We need a daily recurrence to it, 
that its showing of the Father may not fade 
and vanish. Otherwise we should lose the 
level of our conception by degrees, and lapse 
toward the pre-Christian vagueness. Our 



108 Faith and Righteousness. 

memory cannot be trusted, especially to 
keep and carry intact and impressive so 
subtle a view as that of the Deity which we 
may catch in some happy mood of life. 
There is danger of our best vision dissolv- 
ing and floating off into nonentity, as the 
tinted cloud vanishes even while you gaze. 

I have a friend who tells me how impos- 
sible it is to retain in his eye a material form 
with accuracy and permanence. He is a 
carver in wood, for the ornamentation of fine 
furniture. He is a genius in his sphere. His 
cutting of a bird, a buck's head, a lamb, 
seems to give it everything but life. His 
carved flowers mimic nature to a marvel- 
lous extent. But he never works without 
his model before him, to keep him up to 
his level, even though he repeat the same 
device to a hundredth time. In the absence 
of his symbol or his type, he finds he grad- 
ually loses ground, — here a line, and there a 
curve, and elsewhere a rounding; a depres- 
sion rises, a prominence lowers; and little 
by little the eye yields to an evil influence, 
so that his fiftieth piece would be a caricature 



The Incarnation a Necessity. 109 

of his first. But if a rare eye is unequal to 
the holding with security a view of the finite 
and outward, what may we not expect will 
become of the vast and subtle visions of the 
Infinite, flashed out upon our elevations of 
soul, had we not some embodied likeness and 
abiding symbol? What ideals would fade, 
and refuse to be recalled ! What open pros- 
pects — granted once, as on some mountain 
the clouds part and give you an instant out- 
look, and then close — would shut in, and 
stay shut in ! What lost conceptions should 
we have to sigh over, — as many of us have 
sighed at the lost face we knew and loved 
in our earliest childhood ! How would our 
God become a dim and hazy memory, a faded 
picture no art could recover, a vanished face 
from before the soul ! 

In short, it is the office of the incarnation 
to supplement and complete the revelations 
of Nature. A life can be best reflected in a 
life. God can be most adequately and fully 
expressed in a character, — - and, indeed, I see 
not how he could type and show forth his 
personal and manifold spirit in any other way. 



no Faith and Righteousness. 

Matter is too set and clumsy, too formal and 
cold, too dead and expressionless, even at its 
best, to portray the divine in all its depths of 
thought, and tenderness of soul, and person- 
ality of relations. It takes spirit thus to 
mirror spirit. It demands character to show 
forth character. 

Take, for instance, the condescension of 
God, seeking you out in your obscurity, and 
waiting upon your soul in the spirit of a guest 
and friend, coming at your poor and stam- 
mered entreaty, placing his arm under you in 
your need, answering your lowly cry of sor- 
row or remorse, — this is not the lesson of 
Xature as that volume is usually read. The 
most palpable impression of the outward uni- 
verse is that of power. My first notion of 
Deity — and in this I think I was not singular 
— was of an impersonal omnipotence. God 
seemed to me the might} 7 power that terrified 
rather than warmed my heart. I saw Him — 
or It — in the swaying ocean, the uplifted 
hills, the sweep of the wind and the tramp of 
the storm ; in the depths of space, with its 
wheeling systems and its fearful suns. I stood 



The Incarnation a Necessity. 1 1 1 

on the old farm as a minute speck against a 
universe of cold granite. I saw no mild face 
in the heavens ; I felt no sympathy in the 
earth. I rambled over the hills alone, with 
no hidden heart beating against mine, no gen- 
tle voice of love whispering to me, no friend 
attending my steps. The world did not seem 
godless, but it did not seem full of a tender 
and companionable presence. And never 
shall I forget when the lesson of the incarna- 
tion in Christ came home to me, in connection 
with the words, " He that hath seen me, hath 
seen the Father." " Ah ! " said I, " is this so ? 
Shall I set that lowly and loving spirit in this 
vast world around me? Shall I transfer that 
New Testament character, more gracious than 
a mother's, above these hills, into the night's 
darkness, and into the dizzy spaces ? " Yea, 
even so I did ; and lo ! the old world van- 
ished like a dark scroll, and a new earth and 
a new heaven stood before me, wherein were 
the dear affections and influences that were 
better than life. 

The religion of Nature has been a religion 
of fear ; always a religion of fear, — a re- 



H2 Faith and Righteousness. 

ligion of awful sacrifices to gain the eye and 
ear of the stern Arbiter of events. Its devo- 
tees have been filled with boding and trem- 
bling, as not having found the love that 
tempers the divine power and that concen- 
trates with a personal interest upon every 
child of the race. In the stooping of Jesus 
to the child and the outcast and the sorrow- 
ing; in the benignity of the Saviour; in the 
graciousness of the Lord and Redeemer, 
overlooking none, accessible to all, yearning 
to meet and greet all, inviting the lowest and 
worst to come to him and share his company 
and helping ministrations, — in all this we 
learn first and best to know him who is the 
soul of all things, and infinitely great because 
infinitely condescending. 

We need not stand afar off, we need not 
draw nigh in fear; for the universe veils an 
inviting face. The brooding Presence, every- 
where like that that dwelt in Judaea, will ex- 
clude none. The appeal is to woe and want, 
not less than to joy and affluence. The beggar 
is as privileged as the prince ; the peasant in 
his cot as the lord in his palace ; the sinner 



The Incarnation a Necessity. 1 13 

as the saint; the little lisping child, white- 
robed for its night's sleep, as the mature man 
or woman. No one needs to go in fear. 
Said a clergyman to me once, " I offer prayer 
to Jesus, since I am unworthy to approach 
the Most High." But, said I, " My Deity is 
reflected in and through Jesus, and both alike 
would give me ear and favor." The Infinite 
bends down to the finite, as the mother to the 
babe. The Holy Spirit waits in the depths, — 
waits on us continually. He that sits on the 
planets stands by every toilers side in the 
dusty shop and on the farm. He forbids none 
to come unto him. His gates are never 
closed. Nay, he hastens forth to meet every 
comer, and gives him a gracious welcome. 

Take, again, the moral purpose of God to 
bring the race to a perfect obedience. Nature 
does not show it. Nature does not reveal the 
Father's intent of discipline, to the end that 
every child of his shall be " thoroughly fur- 
nished unto good works." Nature is bountiful 
towards our temporal wants, — gives us seeds 
and seasons, food and fuel, ample material for 
clothing, soft fleeces and growing fibres to be 
8 



H4 Faith and Righteousness. 

woven into needful fabrics, commodities for 
commerce and wealth, quarries and forests 
for warehouses and homes. Nay, more, Na- 
ture supplies amply our aesthetic want. She 
scatters beauty with a free hand. Her curves 
and colors are endless. She arches the sky, 
instead of making it flat and unlovely. The 
trees are flexile and swaying, instead of rigid, 
and now and then burst into the very profu- 
sion of bloom. The waters ripple and flow. 
The birds bring a thousand tints to our eyes, 
and notes to our ears. The very rocks are 
fringed with mosses, and the dark soil she 
hastens to hide beneath her beautiful carpet 
of green. The sunset has a charm to stay 
the most stolid, and check the child in its 
sports. It is clear enough that the Genius of 
the world regards the fine sense of the eye 
and ear. Nay, more : the intellect is tasked 
and tempted into activity by these outward 
conditions, by the laws and processes of Na- 
ture. But the moral code is not written there ; 
morality is not urged on the face of the land, 
nor across the dome of the sky. The winds 
are silent concerning the virtues, the waters 



The Incarnation a Necessity. 1 1 5 

murmur not of duty, the Golden Rule is 
not found among the secrets of the visible 
world. 

Now, I am not going to impeach Nature, 
not even to turn critic on her. She is right 
in her sphere; but her sphere, as we must 
affirm, is a lower one. Matter is the base of 
the world, and not its crown. The material 
falters on the margin of the spiritual, and its 
stammer ends in a silence. The dust is mute 
concerning the highest things. The com- 
mandments are unspeakable by the rigid lips 
of matter, as there is no machine so delicate 
in its touch as the living finger. The earthy 
cannot contain and reflect the heavenly, since 
there is no adequate unity. Nature is but a 
broken mirror of God in all his perfections 
and his high moral purpose towards man. It 
never says, "Be ye holy," a Do as you would 
be done by," " Love your enemies," " Go after 
the lost to save them, as the shepherd fol- 
lows his wandering lambs to the wilderness," 
" Commiserate sorrow," " Lift up and cheer 
the burdened heart, " " Be godlike." The ten 
thousand shapes and colors of matter, beauti- 



1 1 6 Faith and Righteousness. 

ful, indeed, and useful, as filling a place in 
the development of the universe, afford but 
shadowy messages of the final state of man 
as God foresees and ordains it. 

And so the " Word " must be made flesh 
and dwell among us. The True Light must 
have its typical star. The Spirit must choose 
a spirit through which to show its nature and 
speak its desires. The Christ is the only 
true symbol and messenger of the Divine 
character and will and purpose. And I 
scarcely need remind you how he plead from 
the cradle to the cross, with his daily life and 
his never silent lips, the cause of holiness. 
To him, sin was the great evil, virtue the great 
good. That was the synonym of death; 
this, of life. That was the destroyer that 
chased down and tore its victims; this, the 
angel that healed and blessed. That was the 
whirlwind that left desolation in its track; 
this, the June zephyr that carried freshness 
and joy on its way. That leads to infamy; 
this, to a real fame. That cast down to hell ; 
this, as with a chariot of glory, bore the soul 
up to heaven ! 



The Incarnation a Necessity. 117 

Again, and in conclusion, note how touch- 
ingly the love of God is shown through this 
" Word " that was made flesh and dwelt 
among us. I have only time to sketch a 
picture or two in illustration of the thought. 

You will remember that on one occasion 
there drew near to Jesus a leper, — a man on 
fire and consuming with a fearful malady, an 
outcast by Jewish law, one whom none could 
touch without defilement and the need of after- 
purification, the terror of childhood, the dread 
of maturity, the loathing of all. From such, 
the most wretched of mortals, sympathy had 
been withdrawn, and aid revoked. The leper 
must live in solitude, and die alone. So 
far as possible, he was forgotten. But such a 
one drew near to the Son of God ; and what 
do you behold? Did he cry, " Unclean, 
away? 5 ' Nay. Jesus laid his hand on him 
and touched him, — the supreme act of ten- 
derness in such a case, where not even his 
mother would have touched him, nor his 
father approached his presence. No soft and 
friendly hand had he felt in all those sick and 
dreary days and months. But Jesus touched 



1 1 8 Faith and Righteousness. 

him ! Oh, never had leper such a touch 
before ! And that was God making visible 
and real to man his own condescending and 
blessing love. 

Take another picture. Christ stopped to 
caress and take to his bosom the little chil- 
dren that gambolled in his pathway. The 
disciples murmured. The children were be- 
neath their notice ; men and women were of 
account, as being convertible and wielding an 
influence. They were material for the active 
army, fit to bear banners and swords. They 
told for the strength of the cause. But the 
children were of no avail, were counted out 
as ciphers. But Jesus — and the Heavenly 
Father through him — clasped his arms around 
their sweet weakness and innocence, and 
breathed out a blessing upon them, in the 
immortal words: "Of such is the kingdom 
of heaven." This was an act that has exalted 
every child in the eyes of its mother and the 
world, and has exalted God by showing that 
he sends down his affections to the very cradle, 
and girds such as know him not, and gives the 
weakest a place in his love. Such is God. 



The Incarnation a Necessity. 1 1 9 

But look again. The cross stands on Cal- 
vary, in front of the divine love for men. 
This cross stands before an infinite love, and 
draws us to the real heart of the universe. 
Jesus goes to it from the highest prompting. 
He is in league with the eternal Love, and 
dies to express a divine compassion and pur- 
pose to save the world. The sacrifice is from 
the Father through his Son. It is the Father 
pleading with his children that they may 
come to him without fear and in love and 
obedience. The blood of the Cross has a 
celestial warmth in it; it is the reflection of 
the divine heart. The ruby stream has its 
outflow from God, and floats heavenly tidings 
of good-will to the race. 

I have thus spoken of the Mediator and his 
mediation to stir your hearts to seek the 
Infinite Word, who will be to you wisdom 
and inspiration, and power and peace, and 
everlasting incentive to virtue and charity. 
In God is your life and your final inheritance. 
These bodies will soon return to the dust, the 
earth will slide from beneath us like a pass- 
ing dream, the mortal will vanish like a 



120 Faith and Righteousness. 

scroll from our vision ; and then we shall call 
to the Spirit. But let us not do so as stran- 
gers, since through Christ we are invited to 
enter into the love and service of God. 

Remember that where Jesus condescended, 
the Most High condescends; where the Son 
commanded virtue, the Father commands it; 
where the Saviour showed compassion, the 
Father shows it. I only lift the mirror up to 
your eyes, and ask you to see the face therein 
reflected, and to carry the picture with you 
from day to day, even into the radiant pres- 
ence of your joys and amid the darkness of 
your sorrows. 

" The Word was made flesh, and dwelt 
among us." The spirit of the universe lives 
before us in this brightness of the glory and 
image of the Person ; and through the Christ, 
let us come into the presence and service of 
him whose service is perfect freedom ! Let 
the symbol commend to us the glory that is 
symbolized ! 

" So to our mortal eyes, subdued, 
Flesh-veiled, but not concealed, 
We know in Christ the Fatherhood 
And heart of God revealed." 



III. 

THE CHRIST CONSCIOUSNESS. 



III. 



The Christ Consciousness. 

For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus 
Christ. — John i. 17. 

INVITE you to a consideration of the 
consciousness of Christ as a witness 
of the reality of a spiritual universe ; 
namely, of God, the soul, and immortality. 
In the circle of evidences we may wisely study 
this special segment, — the value of the per- 
ceptions, or consciousness, or spiritual knowl- 
edge, as we may term it, of this one being 
whom we call the Christ. 

This word " consciousness " may be used in 
two senses. Its primal meaning is a knowl- 
edge of self, — of one's own existence, and the 
internal states of that existence. This is im- 
mediate and absolute knowledge. There can 
be no mistake here. I know that I am a liv- 
ing being ; that I share thoughts and feelings, 




124 Faith and Righteousness. 

I also know. My own reality is no problem ; 
and I know equally well that I experience 
those states of being called pleasure and pain, 
hope and fear, love and hate, joy and sorrow, 
ambition and depression, pride and humility, 
meditation and devotion. Of so much I am 
sure with a certainty that has not and cannot 
have the shadow of a doubt attending it. So 
long as I am rational, I cannot regard myself 
as a myth or phantasy ; nor can I deem the 
succession of vital states in me, painful or 
pleasant, innocent or guilty, sensuous or spir- 
itual, as anything but real and vital states. To 
this extent the report of consciousness is act- 
ual knowledge. In other words, we know that 
we exist, and that this train of experiences 
actually flows through our being. To doubt 
here is the acme of absurdity. 

But " consciousness " as a term in our lan- 
guage has a secondary use, and that is with ref- 
erence to what is beyond us. We seem to know 
an outward world of objects and principles, of 
things and beings, of entities and essences, 
of laws and forces. As we know self, so we 
seem to know a not-self ; that is, a universe 



The Christ Consciousness. 125 

around us and above us, which stands in rela- 
tion to us. We seem to know land, water, 
and clouds. We seem to know human beings 
and something of their circumstances, — the 
homes they live in, the art and architecture 
with which they have adorned their houses, 
the trades they follow, the laws they have 
made, and how well or ill they keep them, the 
theories they entertain, the literature they 
have written, the music they have composed, 
and the many sentiments they have shared. 
We seem also to know many hidden phenom- 
ena as existing in this objective universe. We 
have not seen heat, but we affirm its reality; 
nor have we seen cold, but when we stand in 
the northern blast of the winter, or walk on 
the snow that is under our feet, we have no 
doubt on this point. We have not seen the 
vital principle of a seed, — a kernel of corn or 
an acorn ; but we believe the seed that is 
healthily developed, and has not been kept too 
long, carries in it a life that may escape into a 
germ, and then pass into a stalk or tree. We 
have not seen electricity; but we think this 
subtle presence lurks in all the earth and the 



126 Faith and Righteousness. 

air, and is ready to illumine our paths, bear 
our messages, or act as medicine on our frail 
bodies. We have not seen ethics, but we ac- 
cept morals as among the highest realities ; nor 
have we with our outward eye beheld the es- 
sences and entities which we denominate spir- 
itual, but we seem to be conscious of these 
supreme factors of the universe we live in. 
We seem to recognize a spirit in man and in 
nature through the action of our inner facul- 
ties, and to feel the touch of an eternal realm. 

Thus, the first office of consciousness is to 
take note of self and its experiences, — and to 
this extent it cannot mistake, since we know 
beyond a peradventure that we are living 
beings, and that we share such and such 
thoughts and feelings; while its secondary 
office is to apprehend, and, so far as possible, 
comprehend, the not-self, — the world beyond 
us, but which sustains manifold relations to 
us. Here, however, its deliverances are not 
entitled to the same degree of confidence. 
We do not know the not-self— the vast outer 
realm of realities and relations — as we know 
the little domain of our inner life with its 



The Christ Consciousness. 127 

passing moods and fixed states. In the latter 
we are at home ; but in the great beyond 
we are very much of pilgrims and strangers. 
There our knowledge is progressive and slow 
and often at fault, or out of harmony with 
the facts. The growing book of our con- 
sciousness or accepted wisdom needs many 
revisions. An infinite height and fulness is 
the universe we live in ; but man is a humble 
beginner in his studies of it, starting from the 
lowest rounds on the endless ladder, and 
making many missteps as he ascends. Hence 
the accepted truths of one era are often set 
aside by another as pestilent heresies. Hence 

" Our little systems have their day ; 

They have their day, and cease to be : " 

for they are but " broken lights," or at best 
only scintillations from the vast orbs of truth 
and wisdom. As in our school-days the 
sums we placed on our slates or the black- 
board needed " proving " by some accredited 
mathematical process, even so do our con- 
clusions concerning the universe, its facts, 
laws, and entities, need verification. How 



128 Faith and Righteousness. 

ready are we to sit at the feet of any one who 
is clothed with an evident authority to speak 
in any given case ! To a superior wisdom 
and insight how naturally do we submit our 
consciousness for confirmation, as we submit 
gold to the assayer's test, or some compound 
to the chemist's crucible. Of the great mas- 
ters we would not only be pupils, seeking 
things new, but we also would invite them 
to set their seal on old acquired convictions 
and half-convictions and vague biases, so that 
we may give our faith in them the greater 
assurance and repose. Better than the ver- 
dict of thousands may be the witness of a 
single one, if the many are occupying a lower 
plane of observation, and the one has risen in 
his culture and character to a point of survey 
which gives him every advantage and renders 
him an authority. A colony of dwellers in 
some deep valley may not speak as wisely of 
the outlying regions beyond the mountains 
as some mountaineer who has stood on the 
highest peak, amid all this scenery, and 
scanned it with a clear and penetrating eye. 
Thus, while we confess there is more or less of 



The Christ Consciousness. 129 

truth in the old maxim, vox populi ) vox Dei, 
— a universal sense is trustworthy, — still do 
we find an especial satisfaction when the 
qualified ones, the geniuses, the great and 
noble, second the general testimony; and 
especially when they do so with a hearty con- 
fidence and a trumpet-like positiveness. In 
this way the ciphering of the masses seems to 
find proof; the sense of the race to be verified. 

Thus unspeakable is the value of lofty 
minds and rare souls as witnesses to the 
truth of things ; and we may wisely pass 
by the multitude, and look for the veri- 
ties in these high circles, for we well know, 
by the record of history and by the light 
of common-sense, that progress and develop- 
ment bear the race away from the errors of 
the universe, and on to its truths. That is, 
we should not go down, but up, to seek 
the revelations of truth w T e may rely on, the 
voices most to be trusted, and the verdicts 
on w T hich our faith may rest as on a sure 
foundation. 

And so for a statement of facts concern- 
ing any one of the great provinces of 

9 



130 Faith and Righteousness. 

Nature and life which lie above us and 
before us, such as music, art, poetry, phi- 
losophy, jurisprudence, ethics, or religion, 
we rightfully go, not to a group of bar- 
barians, not to the children in our schools, 
not to college boys grouped around their 
professors, not even to the common people, 
but to a select few standing at the tops of 
these rising columns, — nay, to the foremost 
spirit, if he be known, in each of these sev- 
eral departments. And in this way we can 
see how Jesus of Judaea, the Christ of the 
New Testament, the highest and holiest soul 
of the ages, may well be regarded as au- 
thority in spiritual matters ; and in the great 
choir we may well listen first of all for his 
voice. For as a seer of these higher veri- 
ties he has no peer. With a God and an 
immortality none has seemed so conver- 
sant, and of them none has been so well pre- 
pared to speak. Around him stand all 
the great names of earth on whom the light 
of faith has shone, as around some towering 
central peak stand the foothills and the lower 
summits ; and assurance from him of the real- 



The Christ Consciousness. 131 

ity of a Divine Being, a spiritual kingdom, a 
glorious destiny, must be regarded as a most 
reliable evidence, — an impressive confirma- 
tion of the intuitions of the favored few 
whose names adorn the religious history of 
the world, and a seal set upon the universal 
sense of mankind. Faith may well lay her 
case at the feet of this unequalled Judge, 
and confide in his renderings. Walking 
along the earthly pathway, we wisely heed 
his voice falling upon us from the midst of 
an upper illumination. For he bears a 
title to speak which clothes his words with 
authority greater than that of synods and 
councils. More significant than the com- 
bined voices of John and Paul and the great 
leaders of the world is the single voice of 
this loftiest soul. Let Milton tell us about 
poetry, for to him knowledge is an open 
secret; and for the same reason let Angelo 
speak of art, Beethoven inform us of the 
sweet and potent mysteries of music, and 
Blackstone unfold the domain of jurispru- 
dence. But if we seek moral and spiritual 
facts, then, rising from the intimations of our 



I3 2 Faith and Righteousness. 

own souls and the utterances of all the saints, 
let us go and sit at his feet who was with- 
out guile in practice, and, so far as we 
know, without error in insight, — the most 
phenomenal life of the ages. 

As proof of a Deity and a divine sphere, 
the humblest sensibility is valuable. Almost 
may we think that the matin song of the 
bird, greeting the sky, is the witness of an 
all-present love. Speaks not the happy 
smile of the spring of a Creator of beauty 
and gladness? That sense of a Divinity 
which, according to Robinson Crusoe, the 
Man Friday felt on his lonely island, and 
which stirs in the heart of a Hottentot and 
is vividly present in a peasant's soul, is in- 
deed significant as an intimation of an ob- 
jective reality, as the dim shadows in a lake 
hint the reality of mountain and sky and 
cloud. But the same sense in the cultivated 
means more, for it shares the confirmation 
which reason and progress bring to it. But 
in spiritual genius it has a still greater value 
as evidence ; and in Jesus of Nazareth it rises 
to an unprecedented authority, since neither 



The Christ Consciousness. 133 

in the past nor the present has he a peer 
• as an immaculate life and a teacher of truth, 
i Hence on his sense of a God and a soul and 
an immortality we may rest our faith with 
a double assurance. Of all the oracles, 
his voice may be deemed most worthy of 
confidence. 

Once, at a feast for clergymen, the con- 
versation took the form of a colloquy on 
the evidences of a spirit in Nature and a 
spirit in man, and of a time when these 
may come into a more ideal relation than 
is possible while the latter is moving amid 
these brief and overshadowed paths of 
earth. Each man was asked to lay his 
chosen word on the altar of proof ; and so 
a happy hour was spent in making these 
contributions, which by their number and 
variety revealed how cumulative is the great 
argument, and conclusive when all its parts 
are in. One spoke of the necessary per- 
sonality of intelligence and love, and how 
that personality seems so often to withdraw 
from matter, as in all high thought and 
worship, and to hold only an incidental 



J 34 Faith and Righteousness. 

relation to it, as the kernel to its husk, and 
how all mental and spiritual growth is a 
prophecy of a final separation, in which the 
personality shall remain intact, and only its 
material garment fade away and perish. 
Another named the universal longing for a 
life above earth and time as significant, 
and showed us one and another great hope 
passing into a happy fruition. Another told 
us of a light that had broken through, illum- 
inating his path in an unexpected hour, and 
that he had actually beheld the things of 
a divine sphere. Another related the dy- 
ing vision of a friend. Another pointed 
to the empty tomb on the rocky slope of 
Olivet. But at last it came the turn of 
Robert Collyer, who proved the master- 
bowman of them all, and sent his arrow 
straight to the centre of the target. " I 
believe all these things are so, as our hearts 
would have them," said he, " because to the 
highest and purest spirit that the world has 
known, whom we call the Christ, they seemed 
the most real, lying in the transparent light 
of his consciousness as clearly as moun- 



The Christ Consciousness. 135 

tains lie before the eye in a bright October 
day. On my own sense of these spiritual 
presences, which in my best hours is vivid 
and faith-fostering, I love to repose, and 
on the experience of a great soul I rest 
with a little firmer reliance; but most of 
all I trust and believe the report made by 
the One Soul that has gone the highest 
and lived the best of any on our planet. 
For I do not believe," continued he, " that 
by progress we rise away from the truths 
of our w r orld, but rather toward them; and 
more than a savage or an epicure or a 
scientist or a savant or any saint must Jesus 
know of these divine things ; and so to him 
I look with a sure confidence. " Here Mr. 
Collyer rested his faith and kindled his 
hope, and the group of ministers was 
grateful for the word he had spoken. 

If we seek in the Nazarene the three quali- 
fications needful to a true witness, we shall 
not only find them, but find them in a su- 
preme degree. His integrity was absolute. 
His gift of insight w r as marvellous. From the 
true principle he would set aside the faintest 



136 Faith and Righteousness . 

trace of the untrue. He drew his ethics 
from mixed sources, but brought along not 
the faintest trait of a Pagan or Jewish im- 
perfection. He set the Golden Rule in better 
terms than had any other. His morals and 
his humanities are final statements of these 
eminent principles ; and all the ages can do 
is to comprehend them and apply them in 
every-day life. As we cannot paint the lily 
or adorn the rainbow, no more can we im- 
prove on the scheme of virtue and love 
submitted in the gospels. 

And then with what infallible certainty and 
wonderful swiftness did he detect the most 
concealed motives in the hearts around him ! 
No subtlety of the most artful Pharisee es- 
caped his notice, and beneath the passionate 
and fickle ardor of a Peter he saw the hidden 
lineaments of a steadfast soul, which would 
one day burn sooner than turn. But to im- 
maculate honor and rare insight he added the 
third essential of the true witness, — -a special 
opportunity for knowledge. On the spiritual 
realm his clear eye was steadily fixed, and 
with the Unseen his converse was constant. 



The Christ Consciousness. 137 

The solitude was vocal to his finer ear, and 
along the most unfrequented paths he walked 
not alone. He knew in whom he trusted. 
He was aware whence came his inspirations. 
In the Father he found wisdom and grace 
and peace as he turned to him amid the 
scenes of his Judsean lot ; and with an eternal 
world, as on the Mount, he stood in open 
relations. Of death he spoke not, but only 
referred to the spent body as asleep. And 
hence let us accept as one of the foundations 
of our faith this consciousness of the diviner 
being which has been clothed in flesh and 
walked on the solid earth. " For the law 
was given by Moses, but grace and truth 
came by Jesus Christ. ,, 



IV. 

THE FALLACY OF DISBELIEF. 



IV. 



The Fallacy of ^Disbelief. 

Be not faithless, but believing. — John xx. 27. 

HERE are negatives which may be en- 
tertained and advocated with the last 
degree of certitude; and there are 
other negatives that must always be held and 
asserted with a logical reservation, since the 
argument on their behalf is not complete, 
and in the nature of the case cannot be. 
That is to say, some negatives or denials 
are facts beyond all question, and we may 
stand by them as firmly as by any of the 
self-evident propositions. But there are 
others which do not come under this head, 
and which are always to be taken with some 
degree of distrust, or allowance in favor of 
the contrary proposition. We may deny 
with all the force of the logical mind, and 
in the strongest terms that the language 




142 Faith and Righteousness. 

supplies, that a thing can be and not be at 
the same time; that the half can equal the 
whole, that two and two are ten, or that two 
parallel lines can enclose space; for these 
propositions contradict the possibilities of 
the case. But the same is not true of the 
affirmations that there is a God dwelling 
in all the vast spaces of the universe and 
abounding in wisdom and goodness, or that 
there is in man a soul that is as distinct from 
the body as the seed from the shell, or that 
beyond this little round of time, our life 
stretches on and on amid scenes of beauty 
and peace and growth. 

The two sets of propositions belong to 
entirely distinct classes. Proof against the 
former is positive; but against the latter it 
can only be of that nature known in logic 
as moral or inferential or problematical. We 
can probe the first set of postulates to the 
very bottom, and show that they have not 
the least semblance of reality about them ; we 
can look them through as we can a tube 
turned to a vast void, and see that there is 
no object there; we can come to the very 



The Fallacy of Disbelief. 143 

end of the logical process, and find there is 
and can be no item of truth in them. But 
we cannot thus deny the postulates that af- 
firm the existence of a Divine Spirit in the 
world, a supermaterial life in man, and a 
blessed immortality; for our argument of 
disproof falls short of reaching an absolute 
conclusion. Go as far as we can, there is yet 
a great untraversed region to be explored, 
where even infinity and immortality may 
have their glorious seats, and the great lights 
of life may actually shine and shine forever, of 
which we seem here to catch glimpses, as in 
the later watches of the night the distant day 
throws up auroral gleams. No one can enter 
that realm and call it void. We have no 
plummet-line wherewith to sound that sea; 
no evidence for the assurance that it is all 
a shoreless realm. For aught that can be 
known, God may be there, and angels may be 
there, and the hopes of all the souls of the 
generations may have passed into a state of 
actual fruition in that "Bright Beyond." 

Hence a bald atheism is not to be admitted 
within the province of logic, but must always 



144 Faith and Righteousness. 

be held with a margin of reservation in favor 
of the opposite theory of the universe. The 
positive atheist goes beyond the rational limit, 
and his denial becomes an assumption. He 
can only claim that it looks to him as if there 
is no God, but not that there is none; be- 
cause his eye is still gross and can see but a 
little way. What he sees is only as one to 
a hundred, or a thousand, or a million, when 
compared with what he does not see. He 
wades a few steps into the sea of knowledge, 
and then is beyond his depth, and flounders 
in an ocean of ignorance, not knowing with 
absolute certainty either what there is not, or 
what there is. He must still confess, on logi- 
cal grounds, that there may be a Great Spirit, 
full of power and wisdom and love, abiding in 
the great arcana where his eye cannot pene- 
trate, and thus his argument of disproof falls 
short. David saw this fallacy of a dogmatic 
atheism, and ascribed it only to the man who 
was devoid of a good head. It was the " fool " 
who could say, without some margin of re- 
serve, " there is no God." No one has sent 
a sufficiently searching glance into the light 



The Fallacy of Disbelief. 145 

to disclose that there is no " finer light" 
shining there. Xo one can affirm there is no 
H spirit in the wheels " of this rushing, but 
safely guided chariot of worlds. No one 
who has full respect for the possibility of the 
case, and hence not a Darwin or a Kuxley, 
dare deny that there may have been an 
intelligent and efficient First Cause at the 
remote end of the vast chain of apparently 
secondary causes ; nor that, a divine afflatus 
having been imparted, it has not passed into 
all the beautiful and benevolent succession of 
unfoldings. 

No man is competent to file a bold negative 
of this sort. Not only may the bird have had 
its sweet harp strung by a musical Hand, but, 
further, as the statues of Memnon sang only 
under the touch of the sunshine, so may the 
robin, the lark, and the nightingale pour 
forth their melodies into the ear of the morn- 
ing or evening at the touch of a Holy Spirit. 
He who knows not how the grass grows, has 
no data on which to deny that the flower 
blooms at the behest of an Eye that may 
wander through earth and sky in quest of 
10 



146 Faith and Righteousness. 

beauty. He knows not what skill paints the 
rose and perfumes the lily, and certainly not 
that an Infinite Genius may not have been 
there to do what a Raphael or a Titian could 
not. No man knows that the poets have been 
deluded in their sense of inspirations sweep- 
ing in from above themselves, nor that the 
Lord may not have called to Abraham and 
Moses and Paul and Luther with some actual 
appeal from his hidden presence, and met 
the waiting saints of all the ages with the 
beaming of his face. In all the seasons of 
the year, and in all the strivings of humanity, 
there may be a God, even as the poetic and 
the spiritual have felt and affirmed ; and the 
great chorus of praises and prayers, moving 
up from earth's generations like a vast cloud 
of incense or a great wave of music, may not 
have gone forth into a boundless void, but 
have found their way to an open and atten- 
tive Ear, and a Bosom not unmoved with 
sympathy. Hence there must ever be a 
reservation in the terms of atheism, since 
man can see so little way into the depths of 
the universe; or, boldly and unqualifiedly 



The Fallacy of Disbelief. 147 

asserting this negative, as one who claims to 
know, he only exposes himself to the charge 
of the Psalmist, that he is devoid of under- 
standing. 

And thus there may be in man a soul that 
is the source of all his greatness and worth 
and aspiration. As the pea has a pod and a 
kernel ; as the acorn has a perishable cover- 
ing that passes away with the decay of a single 
summer, and a central life that may be in its 
full vigor a thousand years hence, — so may 
there be in this body of ours a spirit akin to 
a higher order of creation and destined to live 
forever. The materialist must needs pause 
in the sweep of his negative in this direction, 
out of deference to the actual possibility there 
is in the case. Where his knowledge ends, — 
and that is a great way this side of the inmost 
chambers of his nature, — there his denial of 
mans spiritual rank and fellowship must 
cease ; or beyond that he can only cast the 
verdict of hypothesis. It may be so and so, 
is all he is permitted to affirm. 

When the atheistical Frenchman of the last 
century declared in so many words that 



148 Faith and Righteousness. 

" Thought is a secretion of the brain, as bile 
is of the liver," or when Helvetius said, 
without reservation, that " ideas are modifica- 
tions of matter," both of them violated the 
first law of logic by failing to have a premise 
of sufficient breadth to bear out the conclu- 
sion. They were guilty of resting an affirma- 
tion on an uncertain ground ; for neither the 
one nor the other knew whereof he affirmed. 
They spoke beyond their data, since no one 
knows but thought may originate in spirit, and 
not in matter, and that ideas, loves, hopes, 
are the activity of a higher life, instead of the 
modes or conditions of material substance. 
The carnal eye can only compass the out- 
ward; and never yet was dissection sharp 
enough in its searching to detect the principle 
of life, or the source of our moral and spir- 
itual or intellectual conceptions and emotions : 
and hence man is not competent to affirm a 
bold carnalism. He must bow to the sphere 
of mystery; he must defer to the vast un- 
known, and recognizing the limitation, ac- 
custom the mind to a reverence for the 
greatness that may sleep or wake within those 



The Fallacy of Disbelief. 1 49 

folds of secrecy. After all his denials, there 
may still repose at the centre of man's being 
a veiled divinity, as the artist sees a beauti- 
ful figure within the rough exterior of every 
piece of marble. As it is claimed by the fire- 
worshippers that there is an angel standing in 
the sun, hidden by the brilliant flood that 
pours from the shining orb, so may we claim 
— and there is none who bears knowledge to 
the contrary — that there is an angel, not 
born of time, but of eternity, behind every 
lustrous brow and glowing eye of mortals. 

Socrates may have spoken the more scien- 
tific truth when, holding the hemlock in his 
hand, he told his enemies that though they 
might catch his body, they might not be able 
to make a captive of him. The great Athe- 
nian made a distinction between his flesh and 
himself; and there was no carnalist in all the 
classic city who could gainsay his claim set 
up on behalf of his soul. His real life may 
have been but a passing tenant of his flesh, 
as the young bird stays only for a season in 
the little circle of its nest, and then hies away 
on joyful wings. Homer may not have 



150 Faith and Righteousness. 

been only a temporary organism of Grecian 
dust, a mass of earth, solid and fluid, rolled up 
and soon to be struck with dissolution, having 
breathed forth great songs to live through 
the centuries, but may have been, in addition, 
a gifted spirit, with all his light shining from 
this superior centre. The patriotic fires, from 
Leonidas to Lincoln, may have been kindled 
on no mortal altars, but on spiritual ones. 
The sweet humanities are not proven to 
have bloomed from earthly stems, but may 
have opened out from hearts constituted by 
a loving Divinity. The mother and the child, 
and friend and friend, may clasp in each 
other's arms something more than bodies of 
clay, even affectionate and generous natures 
akin to angels. Thus there is an end to 
materialistic logic, because there is a mysteri- 
ous depth in man and in Nature into which 
it cannot push its earthy premise. 

And no more are we competent to deny 
the soul's immortality on any assured ground. 
We cannot pass within the veil and declare it 
is all void there. For aught anybody knows 
to the contrary, this being of earth, who is 



The Fallacy of Disbelief. 151 

never satisfied with what earth has to give, 
but who dreams and yearns toward unattained 
goals, is made for something more than a 
pilgrim of time and an imperfect wanderer 
on these lower plains. We may be heirs to 
a finer and more enduring inheritance. No 
one passing down into the valley is permitted 
to know that he may not pass triumphantly 
through, with angel-guides on the right hand 
and on the left, and with new lights and new 
scenes breaking upon him as from the radi- 
ant hills of Paradise. No one is privileged to 
say that the farewells of earth are not swiftly 
followed by the greetings of heaven ; for the 
mortal eye cannot penetrate the mystic wall to 
see that there are no blest reunions beyond, 
as the ancients could not see that the lands 
beyond the uncrossed ocean were either bar- 
ren or void of happy homes and glad hearts. 
No one knows that poets, prophets, saints, 
and all the great and good of earth have been 
mere dreamers of immortality, cherishing a 
fantasy, and cheated by an illusion. No 
Greek or French or American atheist is com- 
petent to utter the great and fatal negative 



152 Faith and Righteousness. 

that robs the future of its vast and sacred 
charge, — the dear ones absent from our house- 
holds, and all the noble of earth, — because no 
atheist is all-wise in a matter of this kind. 

If we look only downward, and follow the 
groping of the poor sense-vision, the earth 
may seem to be only a sepulchre, its dust only 
the deposit of its fallen generations, coming 
and going in such swift succession from Adam 
to this hour. Our own poet Bryant sees the 
planet for a moment in this light, and strikes 
from his harp the sombre " Thanatopsis : " 

" All that tread 
The globe are but a handful to the tribes 
That slumber in its bosom." 

Thus, in spite of the strongest atheistic rea- 
soning, it appears that Deity, the soul, and 
immortality, may still remain as the all-impor- 
tant realities of the universe, and that Hope is 
not compelled to hang her harp on the wil- 
lows. I have not given now the positive ar- 
guments in favor of their existence, which are 
at once cumulative and strong, flowing in up- 
on us from the wisdom and beauty of Nature, 



The Fallacy of Disbelief. 153 

rising up out of the spirit that is in us, attested 
by the great book of experience, as well as by 
the Bible of prophets and apostles. I have 
purposely left these witnesses unsummoned 
into the court of my present thought. I am con- 
tent to show the inability of our absolute scep- 
ticism to justify its own attitude, and to bring 
to the doubting heart at least a distrust of its 
doubt. I have not chosen even to declare and 
illustrate the relation of faith in the spiritual 
universe to man's elevation and happiness, — 
how greatness and virtue and civilization move 
forward under the light of belief, and recede 
from the darkness of doubt, as flowers close 
on the approach of night; how the world's 
songs will be hushed, and its aspirations cut 
down ; how sorrow will surge like an unre- 
strained tide, and conscience lose its better 
ideals, if these great negatives are held to : 
but, rather, I have chosen the humbler task of 
showing the fallacy of holding to them with 
anything like a firm hold, since there is no 
ample premise for certitude. 

Such being the case, I come in conclusion 
to ask, Why is there the amount of painful 



154 Faith and Righteousness. 

doubt and denial that we find in the world 
concerning the things that are superior to 
matter? Three responses are in order. In the 
first place, man is a natural critic of all things, 
a questioner, and in not a few cases a sturdy 
denier of all that others accept ; and thus in 
the pride of his egotism he not seldom sweeps 
away much that is fairest and best. There is 
absolutely nothing that one and another 
of these reactionary souls has not brought 
under the fire of criticism and denial. It is 
an old satire on this trait which declares that 
the reason why God made man last in the 
order of creation was that he might thus es- 
cape having all his plans contested and his acts 
pronounced unwise in advance. The great 
artists reached no happy strokes of art that 
there were not others ready to condemn as 
falling short of the true ideal of beauty. The 
finest poems have been set aside as not fit for 
a place in the circle of literature. There have 
been those, on the one hand, who have denied 
the existence of matter; and those, on the 
other hand, who have denied the existence of 
spirit. Hence, we could not expect such as 



The Fallacy of Disbelief. 155 

these — and there seems always to be a per- 
centage of them — to embrace heartily the 
general beliefs of mankind, but rather, if the 
masses were to go over to the negative, we 
should look to see them pass over to the 
affirmative. 

In the next place, modern thought has been 
brought under a discipline of reaction on a 
very wide scale, and a habit of taking the 
negative and arguing against established 
conclusions has been acquired, which renders 
our thought unduly destructive. The last 
three centuries have been those of criticism 
and contention against the wild vagaries of an 
earlier day. The Dark Ages sent down huge 
masses of propositions in science and theol- 
ogy and government that had to be met and 
pushed under, as being fit only for the vast sea 
of oblivion. There were mountains of error 
and false usage to confront and set aside ; and 
as our faces have been fashioned by the pro- 
cess of generations, so have the tendencies of 
our thought. Hence the ease with which 
we fall into denials after this long habit of 
antagonism. 



156 Faith and Righteousness. 

But, finally, there is a lack of that spiritual 
imagination and activity that brings the divine 
side of the world out in conspicuous relief. 
We keep our matter-of-fact gifts in such con- 
stant training, and leave our idealizing pow- 
ers so little used, that we have more faith in 
matter than in spirit ; while yet the soul may 
become as assured as the senses if it is 
brought into as steady use; and especially 
if it shares an ordinary degree of construc- 
tive imagination or poetic ideality, it may 
have a vision of the divine, a conception of 
spiritual organism, and a bodying forth of the 
future in glowing perspective. In the New 
Testament story we see that Thomas depended 
only on his outward eye ; and so must ever- 
more the unpoetic nature. To such, faith is 
not easy, because the hidden is not seen 
under forms so real. It was the idealizing 
John whose soul found the joy and peace of 
faith and trust; and well will it be with you 
and me in the realization of the three greatest 
realities, — God, the soul, and immortality, — 
if we go forth in the exercise of our best gifts 
and amid the illumination of our loftiest hours. 



V. 



INFERENCES BASED ON GIFT 
AND GROWTH. 



V. 



Inferences based on Gift and Growth. 

Grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ. — 
Eph. iv. 15. 

MONG all the traits of man it may be 
that no one is more marked than his 
capacity for education. The limit 
of this no one has yet dared define. Heights 
that a thousand years ago were regarded as 
inaccessible to mortal feet have been scaled ; 
and yet the mind of man is still looking on 
with unabated ardor towards other summits 
that rise before. Even the most successful 
specialist, drawing out his one talent to the 
exclusion of all the others, seems not to have 
done anything more than to enter on the path 
that opens out into a luring perspective and 
fairly engage his single gift. 




160 Faith and Righteousness, 

Agassiz declared to his class at Cambridge 
that in his special line of science he felt him- 
self as one walking in the early dawn of the 
day, and with his powers just awakened. 
Even his scientific talent he felt to be more 
enveloped than developed. But of his other 
gifts he had almost no report to make. He 
had once written a poem, and had always 
read Dante and Milton and Wordsworth with 
a sweet delight; and he had often wondered 
to what extent the poetic fire might, under 
better circumstances, have been kindled in his 
soul. He had felt in rare moments the thrill 
of art sweeping across his spirit, — and no 
one could wonder at this who saw with what 
a free hand and easy grace he drew upon the 
blackboard his chalk-sketch of rock and bird 
and fish ; but he had no wide leisure to de- 
vote to the opening out of this gift. He had 
at times discovered in himself a speculative 
tendency, and had dreams of revelling in the 
bright realms of philosophy; but he had never 
suffered his feet to stray away to the groves 
for meditation, or to the arenas for metaphy- 
sical debate. Thus he seemed to himself, as 



Inferences based on Gift and Growth. 161 

he did to all who knew him, and as in fact he 
was, but as a many-stringed instrument with 
only one string in tune, or as a group of gifts 
for manifold attainments with only a single 
one brought under a partial discipline. 

No evenly rounded life can be at all con- 
spicuous for its acquirements; for it would 
require the study of many, many years to 
make it at all notable in the knowledge of the 
ages that are past, and in the comprehension 
of the ages to come. In an ordinary lifetime 
we can do little more than find out the exis- 
tence of our many powers, or we can only 
set a few of them forward on the glowing and 
genial paths of life. All the greatness of 
earth up to the present time has been a par- 
tial greatness of the one who shared it, as 
Solomon was conspicuous for a sententious 
wisdom, Napoleon for soldiership, and Laplace 
for the science of numbers. 

But turning away from a view of those em- 
inent in one thing, to look at the masses, toil- 
ing for daily bread, compelled to walk apart 
from the schools, forbidden to keep com- 
pany with the Muses, their leisure necessarily 
1 1 



1 62 Faith and Righteousness. 

given to rest and recreation, we seem to see 
a world of smothered gifts. As the geologist 
looks to the earth on which the race is dwell- 
ing, and sees in it in thought vast resources 
of ores and metals and precious stones laid 
away for future use ; as the potter sees fine 
vases lying in the mass of unshaped clay ; as 
the farmer sees the source of successive har- 
vests in the virgin soil, — so every discerning 
eye discovers in this field of human life a 
world of capacity that sleeps even in the very 
beginning of its career. The glow of the 
morning, the touch of the spring, have not 
yet reached into those silent and shadowy 
depths. In other words, we discover all 
around us a great outfit for education, but 
seek in vain to see the glorious temple rising 
on ample proportions on this base. Only 
the foundation is laid, and a few scattering 
columns erected. The civilized man is still 
but meagrely educated, and wears his proud 
title only by courtesy. The men and women 
of our best society are nothing more than a 
few feeble notes in the full music of life ; they 
are like organs with most of their pipes silent. 



Inferences based on Gift and Growth. 163 

What a blessing is the school-house at the 
many cross-roads and in the cities ; but how 
few of all the many gifts of childhood it 
reaches, and these few only with what poor 
sufficiency! Of its triumphs we may well 
boast, and may sturdily resist any hand that 
would close its inviting doors. Of all the 
good bequests of the Puritan fathers to us, 
this is at once the wisest and the most hope- 
ful to the republic. And yet, after all its 
wonderful work, it necessarily leaves more of 
the gifts shared by this great crowd of chil- 
dren w r ho are sporting at its doors or toiling 
within, untouched than it touches. Its train- 
ing is, after all, limited and meagre. The 
child seems made for many schools besides 
this at the cross-roads, — for art schools, and 
for church schools, and for social schools, to 
draw out some of its finest attributes. 

Such is the capacity of this creature called 
man for education, — for a various and indefi- 
nite advancement by culture. And now, with 
this thought in mind, let us give some mo- 
ments to a study of the collateral thoughts that 
lie around the subject and are implicated in it. 



164 Faith and Righteousness. 

We touch here one of the many arguments 
that seem to stand unshaken as yet against 
the evolution or Darwinian theory of the 
descent of man. In man's capacity for edu- 
cation we seem to see an original gift, and 
not an inherited one ; for we see nothing like 
it in any lower race. In vain do we look for 
a progressive animal, for any brute tribe mak- 
ing the least experiment of education. In 
vain do we wait to see any creature not hu- 
man leaving its low level and moving away 
from its ancestors and going on to new at- 
tainments. Until we come up to our own 
race we find no improvements being sought 
for and no progress made from any self- 
prompting. The level of a thousand years 
ago is the level of to-day in all the wild 
beasts and the wild birds, and there is still 
no sign of their taking up a forward march 
to the music of aspiration. No animal has 
invented an alphabet or learned its first letter, 
but everywhere man has made for himself a 
complex language. No animal has woven 
a garment, or stirred a fire, or invented the 
simplest device; and, moreover, we see no 



Inferences based on Gift and Growth. 165 

signs of any beginnings in these matters, while 
man's world is full, and growing fuller, if you 
will pardon the solecism, of improvements. 
Hence, not to name in this connection all 
the arguments that sustain man's claim to an 
independent place in the scale of creation, 
I point you to this of his capacity for educa- 
tion. Here he seems a being by himself, 
inspired by gifts peculiarly his own. The 
chasm is too wide and the missing links are 
too many between him and the brute to admit 
of classing them in the same order. Like 
the brute, he is flesh, — and there the advan- 
tages may be against him ; but unlike the 
brute, he is a great mind and a mighty spirit, 
and moves along the ways of growth so 
swiftly and ardently that his past seems low 
and poor, and his future great and rich. 

Indeed, while man may lead the animal 
race a little forward to a greater beauty and 
use, as he can improve the wild rose and 
wild apple, it is still but a very little way that 
he can bear them on. Out of the chariot of 
culture they soon fall, and are left behind. 
To the earth they are chained ; and if forced 



1 66 Faith and Righteousness. 

up, like the stone, directly, if left alone, they 
return. He may tenderly caress and love 
his pets, — and this is one of the sweet and 
beautiful loves of the human heart, — and he 
may make laws to guard the dumb beasts 
from every form of cruelty, — and legislation 
can hardly be more honorably engaged ; but 
he cannot take them into the fellowship of 
his lofty thoughts and sentiments as he turns 
to this great upper world of God and truth 
and immortality. There he must go alone, 
or take by the hand one of his own race. 
Only man is endowed with gifts that turn to 
an ideal world, and only man finds his very 
life and joy in progress. At this point he 
seems to part with the brute and stand in 
another order. 

Another inference from this capacity of 
man for such visions and wonderful growth, 
for which time is too brief and the earth too 
narrow, is that his eager and unspent gifts 
should receive the needed extensions in dura- 
tion and space, — just as the seed that cannot 
mature in June would be given till August or 
October to fulfil its course. In his unde- 



Inferences based on Gift and Growth. 167 

veloped powers, hidden away in the depths 
of his being when the body can serve him no 
longer, in his gifts conferred but not yet edu- 
cated, in his many inner germs and buds that 
have not in the earth found their needed 
summer, and in his aspirations that grow 
with the years but reach not their great 
prizes, we can but see a claim to immortality 
and a prophecy of it; and man may indeed 
come to his last hour with all the more of 
hope since he is so much of a fragment of 
what he was meant to be and created for. 
Since Nature makes beginnings only for ends, 
his incompleteness here becomes the sign of 
his continuance in another era. It is not in 
accord with the most obvious genius of the 
universe, apparent in the maturing of so 
much of life, that all these rarer gifts in us, 
as of poetry and art and learning and virtue 
and love, should be cut short in their half- 
growth, or, it may be, ere they, have begun 
to quicken under the smile of a finer light 
and air. As we see the leaf falling only after 
it has become full grown ; as we observe that 
the rose is not arrested in the bud, but is 



1 68 Faith and Righteousness. 

guarded till its petals open, and the lovely 
hues are all painted on, and the perfect fra- 
grance is borne away on the breeze ; as we see 
the tree is given all the time it needs, a cen- 
tury, or a thousand years, and no English yew 
or American elm is stinted in the gift of days 
needful to mature it ; as we see each robin and 
eagle and elephant spared to reach the ideal 
of its kind ; and as we note that the human 
body climbs to its natural zenith of growth; 
as we study this wide usage in Xature of pro- 
tecting capacity for its culmination, so that 
in the incipiency we have the evidence of the 
end to be won, — do we not find the witness 
of a great law, which is as just as it is great, 
that the soul will not be forsaken in the midst 
of its career and suffered to perish in the bud? 
Must there not also be a fairness in Provi- 
dence towards this being who is made thus too 
great and too aspiring for his earthly sphere, 
and needs a cycle instead of threescore and 
ten years, or the briefer round of a generation, 
in which to fill out the ideal of his creation? 

As one sails down the Hudson towards New 7 
York there appears at one point a mountain 



Inferences based on Gift and Growth. 169 

standing apparently across the river ; but we 
know that this flowing stream, borne on by 
inherent forces, will not pause at that hill 
and vanish away, but that it will be given a 
path, and move in an unchecked current 
beyond the seeming barrier. Thus all un- 
spent force is conserved and guaranteed con- 
tinuance ; and hence the soul, with its powers 
mainly enfolded in this life, may look to some 
after and greater era and to some higher and 
more adequate schooling in which ^11 the 
germs of its being shall bud and bloom 
and bear fruit. Otherwise the waste of gifts 
of the finest quality will be a signal blot on 
the fair spirit of the universe. 

Another lesson from this great capacity 
of education is the much-needed one that 
growth is the law of all progress. It is not 
reasonable to suppose, since this highway 
has been thrown open before us and made 
so easy and inviting, so honorable and de- 
lightful to all pilgrims on it, that any other 
or shorter cut will be made possible. One 
ample road, enchanted with perpetual allure- 
ments, is all we need, and over this each 



170 Faith and Righteousness. 

one may and should pass to the shining goals. 
It would not be best that any part of our 
nature should be caught up and borne on in 
the arms of miracle to the fulness of its 
special life, since thus the double blessing of 
culture or growth would be lost, — the joy of 
it and the merit of it. The only heaven that 
can be truly such is one that the spirit wins 
by opening out under discipline, into beauty 
and greatness, its immortal powers. The 
salvations that are conferred are no salvations 
at all. A saint would cast his crown from 
his brow and seek to hide from the fair 
eye of the angels if his saintship did not 
reflect the consecration of his own will and 
the faithful toil of his own powers. The 
heaven that religion sometimes offers is no 
heaven whatever, and souls look upon it for 
a little, and turn away from the thought of it, 
and pursue it no more. 

The defect in the salvation offered by the 
great revivalists is that it is no salvation, 
reflecting no honor on the soul that might 
share it, and no long rising of joy in its 
acquirement. It is the acquirement of an 



Inferences based on Gift and Growth. 1 7 1 

evening, of a moment, — the swift work of the 
Spirit on the heart, all accomplished and 
sealed between rising from the tea-table and 
retiring to the night's rest. At the close of 
a meeting the professional revivalist will count 
up the souls that have got salvation since the 
service was opened. But while the thought- 
less are happy for a little in their fancied 
possession that they have got, they know not 
how — certainly not by any toil or merit of 
their own — after a time they awake to the 
meagreness of their spiritual wealth, and see 
how poor is the crown to which they are 
entitled, and turn away in sadness or in dis- 
gust. The prize is not golden and solid and 
a jewel to be worn with a high sense of 
honor, but it is only a glittering void. The 
fact is, a conferred saintship is no more pos- 
sible than a machine-made poem, or a hero- 
ism that is compelled; for God has not made 
an exception of the soul in subjecting man 
to the law of education and growth. He has 
not left the spirit out in harnessing the 
powers of man to the chariot of culture, but 
has asked it also to make its own the delights 



1 7 '2 Faith and Righteousness. 

and honors of traversing the highway of self- 
improvement and growth. 

Hence the text wisely calls us to "grow up 
into Christ in all things ; " and in this state- 
ment, recognizing growth as the law of all 
spiritual advancement, Paul but echoes what 
the Master had already announced as the 
method of the kingdom in his parable of the 
leaven and in the words, " First the blade, 
then the ear, then the full corn in the ear." 
It is the law of all life that develops from 
within, and not by endowment. Even as the 
bird and flower generate by the chemistry 
of natural growth the fine hues that adorn 
them, so must the soul work out its own 
salvation ; and then it will have the daily joy 
and credit of the victory. As a painted bird 
or rose would have a fit reason to hide away 
from observation, so would a spirit that had 
been saved by some degree of election or 
the power of a miracle. 

Let us see that there can be no worthy 
salvation except our own toil subserves it. 
The noble soul cares not to be saved on 
other terms. When the old Saxon chief was 



Inferences based on Gift and Growth. 173 

led down to the river by the missionary to 
receive Christian baptism, and with one foot 
in the water paused to ask if the act would 
separate him from his pagan ancestors, and 
was told it would, he manfully withdrew, and 
refused to go to a heaven that threw open 
only such narrow doors. Thus a high- 
minded spirit turns from a bliss that is not 
the sign and reward of its own free-will and 
obedience. It asks the privilege of cutting 
and polishing the jewels in its own crown. 
It would stand amid the wealth of its im- 
mortal joys with some title to the posses- 
sion that contains on it the witness of its 
honorable ownership. 

Do not think that I am ascribing to the 
true soul a rejection of Divine aid. This aid 
it will always covet. On the great sea of life 
it will seek the heavenly lights to sail by, and 
will invoke the favoring breezes ; but it will 
ask to enter the final haven from a voyage 
made happy by a well-chosen activity, and 
covered with an honor in some good degree 
its own. 



VI. 

FAITH CONFIRMED BY PROGRESS. 



VI. 



Faith confirmed by Progress. 

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I 
thought as a child : but when I became a man, I put away childish 
things. — i Cor. xiii. ex. 




T is sometimes affirmed that the race 
is moving away from all religion, as 
from a childish interest which belongs 
not to its manhood, and that in the coming 
era of a fuller development all the once sacred 
terms and usages will be set aside. No more 
after the dawn of that great day of perfect 
enlightenment will the race erect an altar or 
busy itself about a creed. In this ominous 
voice must be heard but an echo of an order 
of thinkers known as Positivists or Secularists. 
Others may have joined these, without tak- 
ing their name, in the belief that religion 
will ultimately throw r out its white flag of sur- 

12 



178 Faith and Righteousness. 

render in the great struggle for existence, and 
yield the arena solely to other interests. 

But is enlightenment thus hostile to faith in 
a spiritual universe? Does a general progress 
carry with it the prophecy of the decay and 
final death of this spirit that has walked our 
earth so long and in such queenlike aspects 
under the name of religion? or does it rather 
disclose the truth of an opposite conclusion; 
namely, that this queen, while she may be 
busy casting off some of her old robes and 
renouncing some of her childish ways, is still 
active in the formation of a more worthy 
character and the choosing of a more fitting 
drapery, which shall make her a permanent 
favorite with the people? Is religion all in 
all such a childish thing that w r e shall set it 
wholly aside in our full-grown manhood, or 
shall we rather ask to have it assume some 
larger and truer form and remain with us, as 
we exchange cobble-houses for real ones, and 
nursery-rhymes for a grander poetry, and a 
mimic commerce for an actual one? Does 
religion grow with our growth, and strengthen 
with our strength, and move steadily along by 



Faith confirmed by Progress. 179 

our side amid all the stages of culture? or, 
like a spectre of the night, will she refuse to 
follow us into the midday of enlightenment? 

Of one thing the most ultra-positivist and 
doubter concerning the perpetuity of religion 
must be assured, it is so patent to reason and 
true to history ; namely, that progress will in- 
crease rather than lessen the desire for a wider 
and higher life than that of earth and time. 
The richer our days become, the more we shall 
shrink at the idea of their termination, and 
long to see a path open for their continuance. 
The fuller the vase of life and the sweeter its 
contents, the more shall we regret to have it 
broken, and its contents spilled on the earth 
like water that cannot be gathered up. Trav- 
ellers have found tribes so little developed that 
they thought and cared almost or quite noth- 
ing about a life apart from the body and an 
existence beyond death. The value and de- 
sirableness of a mental and moral and spirit- 
ual estate they had not discovered, and were 
ready to perish with the dust. The better life 
had not dawned on their inner vision to en- 
trance and lure them. Of a blessed commu- 



180 Faith and Righteousness. 

nion with an ideal world, a world of principles, 
sentiments, imaginations, and essences, they 
knew nothing. Of the rich experiences of the 
savant and saint, the poet and pietist, they 
were ignorant ; and hence they saw nothing to 
be desired when eating and sleeping and the 
chase and the sum of mortal interests were at 
an end. Since their experiences did not rise 
above the carnal level, they had no reason for 
sending desires and hopes beyond the grave. 

But let these same tribes be led along the 
path of progress till the whole group of sleep- 
ing gifts within them are awakened and made 
glad in high activities, and how changed would 
be their estimates and aspirations ! Let the 
finer cups be filled with the finer contents, and 
how they would shrink from having them 
broken ! Let the mind orb itself into view 
through education ; let the moral nature take 
a fast hold on righteousness ; let the heart 
reach on to the better order of friendships in 
which intelligence glorifies love ; let the soul 
be kindled to a spiritual flame through contact 
with the divine, — and no more would it seem 
to these poor beings that the sensations of the 



Faith confirmed by Progress. 181 

flesh are the all in all of existence, but rather 
would they consider these but as the dim 
dawn of the full day of life's greatness and 
glory, and directly would they turn with 
longing towards a continuance of this deeper 
self and this richer experience. No tribes rise 
thus but to meet on their path a desire for 
immortality. To beget and foster such a de- 
sire is one of the offices of civilization ; and 
so, while in some wild Australia or early 
Mexico we may not discover this aspiration, 
we see it rising in conspicuous forms out of 
the best days of nations : and in every great 
age, religion as a faith and a hope has been 
eagerly coveted. For greatness would not 
perish. Genius shrinks from lying down in 
the dust. Progress opens prospects which 
must ever lure and attract. A Comanche and 
a Hottentot may have nothing to conserve ; - 
but every unfolded spirit under the spring 
and summer of culture gathers much to the 
store of life it would not have dissipated to be 
known no more forever. Still would all such 
souls keep and wear the jewel of life, whose 
lustre so pleases. Still would we all retain the 



1 82 Faith and Righteousness. 

rich treasures to which we have attained on 
the highway of progress. Hence religion is 
not that childish thing which belongs only to 
a rude age, but rather it becomes more and 
more an object of life's desire as that life in- 
creases in richness and sweetness ; for it is the 
great and the good who would be immortal 
and drink deeper the crystal spring. 

If it may be said with some truth that the 
lowest savage and the darkest sinner do not 
care for an eternity, this certainly is far enough 
from being the true report of the ripened mind 
and the noble soul, which in the ratio of 
earthly greatness and gladness must long for 
continuance. The great, the good, and the 
true, turn to the future and sigh for an immor- 
tality, that they may bear on their superior 
riches and open ever and ever their coffers, 
which contain such beautiful and pleasing 
gems. A rare spirit would not cease to be. 
" Let me live forever,'' cried Saadi, the gifted 
child of the Orient. " To the sod I can will- 
ingly give my body," said the weary Mozart, 
" but not to eternal silence my soul." He 
loved music too well to bid it an eternal adieu. 



Faith confirmed by Progress. 183 

Thus would the enriched soul live on and 
keep its riches forever. 

But the progress of which we are speaking, 
ever deepening the desire for a religious 
hope, will, it is true, be found hostile to all 
those forms of faith and ritual, coming down 
from a childish past, which are at once irra- 
tional and harmful. Progress will make war 
on them ; nor can they abide with the larger 
measures of light and life. As the youth and 
man must set aside the thoughts and gar- 
ments of the child, so will a later stage of 
progress be called upon to protest against 
much in religion's name which was once 
deemed sacred and found useful. New times 
will demand new creeds and new altars ; and 
in this breaking away from the faiths and 
customs of the fathers it may be felt by some 
of the conservative ones that religion itself is 
in peril, and about to be consigned to the 
owls and bats that frequent deserted ruins. 
As some old castle on the Rhine, no more 
inhabited, sits as a gloomy witness of a once 
busy past, when its halls rang with the shouts 
of festivity or the clamors of conflict, so it is 



184 Faith and Righteousness. 

feared by the more timid ones that religion 
will some day, and that not far away, sit by 
the roaring tide of human life in unused deso- 
lation, — a monument in ruins of a once devout 
and God-fearing and heaven-seeking past ! 

But there is no reason for such an anxiety. 
One form of religion will be forsaken only 
that another form, more rational and con- 
genial, may be sought out. As already sug- 
gested, the greater and richer life towards 
which progress is bearing us does not 
prophesy a decline, but rather an increase in 
the desire for an immortality and a perfec- 
tion; and we may readily infer that such an 
enlarged desire will hardly permit the riper 
man of the coming ages to be thoughtless 
about the grounds of faith and hope. He 
cannot be indifferent to the intimations of 
another world and a wider area for the use 
and joy of his enriched being. 

But the fear of an outgrown religion is also 
seen to be an ill-founded alarm as we survey 
the necessary activity of all the great in- 
stincts. Man's greater gifts — like that which 
strives for a government, or that which shapes 



Faith confirmed by Progress. 185 

a social condition, or that which asks for a 
creed and a worship — appear on the historic 
page as ever busy modifying and improving 
their lot ; but nowhere do we discover one of 
these gifts getting ready to die. A defunct 
instinct is not to be found in all the long path 
of life that the race has traversed. In all the 
course of history there is no spot marked, no 
monument set up with a plaintive epitaph on 
it, where a power or passion of human nature 
was thrust aside and perished like a fallen 
leaf, and w T here man may go and muse and 
shed a tear as he says : " Here lies buried one 
of humanity's great instincts ! " By the long 
and wide path no such gift lies sleeping; but 
all which the earliest man carried, so far as 
history speaks, the latest born shares, but 
now more mature and active. 

I am aware that a hypothetical science, an 
unproved Darwinism, points to a prehistoric 
period in which man cast off a covering of 
fur, and dropped one extremity of his being, 
and rose from all-fours to an erect posture. 
But the links are all missing that might 
authenticate this scientific guess. But in all 



1 86 Faith and Righteousness. 

the thousands of years we can trace there has 
remained a fixed array of instincts ; and ever 
have these been active in making history and 
striving to improve their conditions. Hence 
there has been a great progress from man's 
humble beginning to his present high attain- 
ments ; and there is no reason to believe that 
any gift thus busy for ages is likely to fall by 
the way and perish. 

But rather will progress secure to each in- 
stinct a new vigor and zest ; for so far it has 
been thus in history. In the Dark Ages the 
soul was dormant and listless ; but with the Re- 
naissance it came to the front and has grown 
vigorous, and has matured a religion in its 
more advanced state, reached through liberty 
and culture, with which that of Pope Gregory 
in the tenth century compares only as a wax 
figure arrayed in cheap tinsel compares with 
a stalwart body robed for service, or as a 
weak sapling compares with a lordly moun- 
tain oak. 

In the last fifty years — the foremost in the 
career of the race — the soul of man has been 
more busy than ever before, setting aside a 



Faith confirmed by Progress. 187 

childish past, and shaping a more manly 
present in the matter of religion. Dark and 
cruel fancies, which moved along undisturbed 
in the less thoughtful eras, have been put to 
flight by a more active reason, and many 
absurd forms have given place to a newly 
rising spirit. Theology has never been 
tried by such searching tests. The busy 
mind and heart of our time have shaped a 
more rational and cheering faith and hope, 
and the radiant banner can be borne on with 
a new acclaim. Before our age the name of 
Christ rises with a new interest and power, 
and is becoming very rapidly the centre of 
a broad religious fellowship ; and it would 
almost seem as if the day were not far from 
us in which it will no more be asked in what 
creed do you believe, but do you give your- 
self to the fellowship of Jesus and the simple 
religion of the Gospels? And at length all 
that large section of society called childhood 
is being awakened to the moralities and 
humanities and aspirations of religion. 

Thus let us see the signs in these later 
days, not of religious decay, but of its transi- 



1 88 Faith and Righteousness. 

tion to more mature and manly forms; but 
let us confess that that is happening which 
we ought to expect, that a large crowd is fil- 
ing away from the old, in the general break 
w T ith its childishness and inadequacy, but is 
not marching with eager feet to the accept- 
ance of the new. It is ever thus ; for it is 
easier to observe and renounce an error than 
to see and embrace a higher truth. For the 
latter it takes time and discipline. But still, 
the better faith and the sweeter piety are 
already taking a firm hold of not a few, and 
will at length reclaim the many, since they 
will happily supply the needs of that instinct 
which has been so great a factor in all ages 
and nations, — great in life's best hours, great 
in its vales of sorrow, and great in the final 
hours of earth. And let us see that such an 
instinct cannot perish and pass away, but that, 
like every other gift of human nature, it will go 
on assuming more ideal forms and activities — 
weaving a more perfect web of thoughts, com- 
munions, impulses, endearments, and hopes ! 

Rejoicing thus that the future will have 
this great stream of religion pouring along 



Faith confirmed by Progress. 189 

through it, to make green its valleys and 
fertile its wide fields, let us study for a little 
while the value of that riper faith and piety 
as a witness to the reality of a God and the 
immortality for souls to which they aspire. 

In general terms, it must be said that pro- 
gress removes us from errors and illusions. 
There is less and less reason to distrust the 
verdicts, on whatever matter, of a progres- 
sive humanity. Advancement is through the 
dawn into light; and it is thus that in the 
more perfect religious life which progress 
will evolve — a lower authority being set aside, 
and the soul resting in its own improved 
vision — there will be found a more vivid 
witness of a Deity and an immortality. So 
distinctly will these things be felt that their 
existence will be recognized. A sense thus 
assured to the human nature from which a 
long progress has removed all childishness, 
is a most reliable testimony. 

In all ages it has been confessed that the 
kingdoms of morals and of beauty lie in 
direct contact with the kingdom of the Divine, 
as the earth lies against the realm of air and 



190 Faith and Righteousness. 

light. Hence the great moralists and artists 
have all been worshippers. Not an excep- 
tion can be named; for they have felt a 
spiritual presence brooding over virtue and 
beauty, and have walked along these high 
paths as in the company of a holy and beauti- 
ful spirit. Hence righteousness has been 
called the garment of the Deity, and beauty 
has been regarded as the fringe of his flowing 
robe. In these lofty realms he dwells as in 
a pavilion of glory. His habitations are they ; 
and whoever passes through their sacred por- 
tals and abides in righteousness and beauty, 
will find himself in friendly relations with 
a Deity, and in sensible contact with an over- 
sweeping immortality. And so when pro- 
gress on its rising tide bears a race to these 
altitudes, its experiences of divinity and 
destiny may be taken as individual proofs 
of their reality, 

But note once more how progress, giving 
scope and clearness to the vision of equity, 
and intensity to the claim for its realization, 
awakens a demand — a just demand — for an- 
other life, that the incomplete moral adminis- 



Faith confirmed by Progress. 191 

tration and book-keeping of this world may 
be carried out to a just consummation; that 
all inequalities may be adjusted, all merited 
rewards attained, all deserved penalties in- 
flicted, all wounded loves healed, all unspent 
powers, when Death serves his summons, 
given further opportunity, and all mysteries 
solved, over which our nature has been in- 
spired to toil. And in this sure demand of 
the best souls and the most advanced man- 
kind, let us read the prophecy of a God who 
will give to all a future, and secure to all their 
dues. Without this issue the universe seems 
sadly imperfect, and not homogeneous with 
itself. It seems like the tuning of instru- 
ments without permitting the music ; or like 
a promise made and broken ; or like a jangle 
in the equities never to be harmonized. The 
thought of beings passing out of existence 
to whom deserved rewards and penalties have 
not been meted out, nor a further chance, 
required for fairness, given, is painful in the 
extreme. An eternal injustice blotting the 
wide page, who can bear the thought ! Said 
one of old, " Let justice be done, though the 



19 2 Faith and Righteousness. 

heavens fall ; " and in the best age of the 
world, a vast chorus of voices will take up 
the refrain. 

But our theme calls for one word more. 
The vast progress of the race of man from 
its primitive condition towards a superior 
world, marks it as more than an animal or 
brute order. From the material, man con- 
stantly ascends to the spiritual, and seeks to 
make his encampment amid the glories of the 
Divine and the eternal. His imposing arch of 
progress he starts as if it were to span the 
tomb and rest on the everlasting hills. And 
in all this he shows himself to be a rightful 
heir to immortality. In his speech, his under- 
standing, his thought, which are no more 
childlike, but exalted and on-reaching, he 
reveals his heirship to a yet unattained emi- 
nence, and a glory only dawning as yet on 
his vision. 



VII. 

RIGHTEOUSNESS. 



= 3 



\ 




VII. 

Righteousness. 

Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and 
a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. — 2 Peter iii. 13. 

HE one thing of special interest in con- 
nection with this outlook of Peter 
towards the " new heavens and a new 
earth " is the single quality of life which he con- 
templates and that fires his heart. That qual- 
ity is righteousness. In that great renewal he 
seems to see, as in a blessed vision, one fair 
spirit walking abroad in a superior beauty 
and glory; and that is the spirit of virtue. 
There are other spirits in the coming king- 
dom of heaven, — whether it be here or here- 
after, — of surpassing excellence. All that 
will then make their advent will be of highest 
lineage and divinest aspect; but as one star 
differs from another in glory, so will it be in 




196 Faith and Righteousness. 

the kingdom of God ; and the star that will 
shine the brightest and with the richest beams 
in that galaxy of life, will be the golden orb 
of righteousness. For the moment Peter 
seems to see only this faith, as one may no- 
tice only the evening star, oblivious of its 
shining companions. But Hope will also be 
there, glowing with the flush of the full as- 
surance drawn from its already happy frui- 
tions. Love will be there, with its endeared 
face and its soft hands. Wisdom will walk 
abroad in her garments of light, and rejoice 
in her vast stores of disclosed secrets gathered 
from various and wide fields. Joy will move 
about in that high company, wreathed in 
smiles and decked in gayest flowers. All 
these will come to dwell in the " new heavens 
and new earth " in a grateful harmony. The 
coming reign of Christ shall draw these angels 
down to the abodes of men, and lead them 
forth on the arenas where the immortals 
abide. 

But Peter seems to take no note of these, 
since he is so engrossed in his view of right- 
eousness. Among all the angels he saw this 



Righteousness . 197 

as the very archangel, towering so far above 
the others in its greatness and in its service 
that they seemed to be eclipsed, as the plan- 
ets in the presence of the sun. Hence he 
exultingly exclaims, " Nevertheless we, accord- 
ing to his promise, look for new heavens and 
a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness." 

If Peter, living in more moral days than 
ours, and amid a greater obedience to the 
laws of duty as they run between man and 
man, constituting a network of shining paths, 
had come to place virtue, probity, a full heart 
of Tightness, at the very front, as the best 
thing of time or eternity, how much more 
reason have we to do so, who live in these 
days smitten with moral crookedness and 
general disregard of the ways of justice ! 
Surely to us no spirit should seem so fair and 
desirable as righteousness ! Our age should 
wander down the future to that better time 
coming, to see, of course, all the glories that 
Jesus of Judaea came to bring forth to dwell 
among men, and that will find their place 
amid a truly regenerated and perfected hu- 
manity; but still with Peter should we see 



198 Faith and Righteousness, 

righteousness as the chiefest of the glories. 
Christ will bear us on through the fair and 
happy avenues of growth to nothing else so 
much to our honor and gladness as this. 

Let us attempt to ascertain and mark out 
the place that righteousness must hold in a 
true civilization; or, in other words, let us try 
to get at the grounds for a conclusion such 
as that arrived at by Peter. 

Shall we call righteousness the keystone of 
the beautiful arch of life, without which the 
whole fair structure is liable to fall, like the 
badly roofed walls that our bad architects and 
bad builders have sometimes erected? Yes; 
righteousness is the keystone that sustains 
all the rest, and gives us confidence that every 
other principle and every other power will 
hold its place and stay fast in the fulfilment 
of its office. Take the moral stamina away 
from a man, or a community of men, and, if 
I have read history aright, and am not guilty 
of poor reasoning, all that is left of life, how- 
ever fair and good, is endangered, and we 
may look to see it collapse and pass into ruin. 
The conserving power is taken away, like 



Righteousness. 1 99 

withdrawing the salt from the meat you are 
essaying to preserve. The antiseptic element 
is cancelled, and corruption is almost sure to 
follow, as decay seizes on vegetation, sooner 
or later, when the internal life-condition ter- 
minates. The unrighteous are not to be 
counted on with any great certainty in any 
sphere of their activity, since the moral prin- 
ciple is related to every other with a sustaining 
and guaranteeing presence, and needs to be 
at hand and active to secure piety from de- 
generating to a trick and a cheat for selfish 
designs, and to hold love from becoming a 
cruel artifice to take in the unwary, and to 
keep wisdom from yielding itself as a tool in 
the interest of wrong-doing. 

Under each of these great agents of civili- 
zation, with missions as universal as beautiful, 
must repose the granite base of honesty, or 
they may come down in a sad w 7 reck in some 
moment of trial. In its sustaining place must 
be the keystone of moral character, or the 
shining walls, built of the white marble of 
piety and love and wisdom, may at any time 
shatter and crumble, and pass away like a fair 



200 Faith and Righteousness. 

vision, to leave some hideous scene in its 
stead. Piety, Love, Wisdom, the three celes- 
tial columns, than which neither heaven nor 
earth can have any more beautiful, and around 
which the very angels will rejoice to cluster, 
will never stand firm and sure, bearing steadily 
up against every dashing wave, unless they are 
set in the everlasting rock of righteousness, 
even as the lighthouses along our storm- 
beaten shores stand only because they have 
granite security beneath them. Conscience 
is the only guaranty for the soul and the 
heart and the mind that they will steadily 
and surely play the parts they assume, and 
never play false. 

How often do we find friendship broken 
because, lacking the sway of honesty in one 
party or the other, it took advantage of the 
confidence it had gained ! Love, not morally 
sustained, not infrequently stabs the life it has 
drawn to its bosom, for the sake of some 
selfish gain of place or wealth or liberty ! 
Wisdom, at the bidding of injustice, strays 
from the divine path it clearly sees, and arms 
the base hand of the bad with double power 



Righteousness. 201 

to do evil. And Piety prays to be heard of 
men, and to draw the thoughtless into its own 
crafty coils, rather than to lift itself up into 
the embrace of the Holy Spirit. An under- 
current of virtue, or manly honesty, will alone 
bear these spirits along the celestial ways. 
And hence we may well join Peter in his rapt 
and exclusive outlook towards the new heaven 
and the new earth wherein dwelleth righteous- 
ness, or this foremost spirit of time and 
eternity. 

But some one may ask: "What are you 
going to do with Paul's reckoning, that places, 
or seems to place, charity, or love, at the front 
as the chief grace? How reconcile the teach- 
ing of this sermon and the gospel of the 
great Apostle to the Gentiles as we have it in 
his immortal classic, never surpassed, never 
equalled, that he wrote for the church at 
Corinth? " Well, I shall say, in the first place, 
that Paul does not name righteousness at all 
in his enumeration of the graces in this in- 
stance, and that if he had named it, we know 
not but he might have put the one Peter fore- 
saw at the very head of the list. We are not 



202 Faith and Righteousness. 

sure but the unspoken name would have stood 
above charity. I can hardly believe, in the 
light of what I have said, that he would have 
chosen for the world faith or hope before 
righteousness ; for it is a thousand times bet- 
ter that men should have no piety, and that 
they should hang the sweet harp of hope in 
sadness on the willows, than that they should 
be morally corrupt and the slaves of injustice. 
The atheist may yet be honorable, and a safe 
man in the community, like the learned and 
just Thomas Hobbes in England, or the fa- 
mous Hollander Spinoza, who lived well and 
wrote his greatest work on ethics ; but from 
the corrupt man honor flies as beauty from a 
reeking cavern. The life that sees no radiant 
path opening down into the future, and that 
moves on uncheered by a happy expectancy, 
may yet be a life to be well thought of and 
spoken of with praise ; but the morally de- 
based life is stripped of its claim to regard. 
Surely would Paul have surrendered faith and 
hope from the earth sooner than virtue and 
justice, as any mother would rather have her 
son or daughter walk apart, here in the earth, 



Righteousness. 203 

from the divine face and the pleasant light of 
immortality, than apart from the paths of 
integrity, purity, and daily honor. 

But love is so essential to life, and comes 
among men with its arms so full of joys and 
blessings, that it would almost seem it could 
not be placed below righteousness ; and yet 
I believe had Paul made the comparison, 
from which he may justly have shrunk, he 
would have placed it there. For, as I have 
said, virtue is the very base and security of 
love; and it seems to me better that one 
should move coldly among the people he 
meets, unstirred by sympathy, unwarmed by 
the blood of a tender heart, than that he 
should disregard the laws of right, and wan- 
der recklessly from the moral ways. But the 
author of that great chapter on love has not 
left us by any means to guess at his high esti- 
mate of righteousness ; for if when love was in 
his mind he could not find it in his heart to 
advance any w r ord that should seem to dim, 
by a shade, her brightness, at other times he 
magnifies, with a free emphasis, the moral 
attribute of man. Listen to these periods: 



204 Faith and Righteousness. 

" Be ye holy, even as God is holy." " The 
kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but 
righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy 
Ghost." "That ye put off concerning the 
former conversation the old man, which is 
corrupt according to the deceitful lusts ; and 
be renewed in the spirit of your mind ; and 
that ye put on the new man, which after 
God is created in righteousness and true 
holiness." " Christ is the end of the law for 
righteousness to every one that believeth." 
" Unto the Son he saith, Thy throne is for 
ever and ever : a sceptre of righteousness 
is the sceptre of thy kingdom." " Where- 
fore take unto you the whole armor of God, 
that ye may be able to withstand in the 
evil day, and having done all, to stand. 
Stand therefore, having your loins girt about 
with truth, and having on the breastplate 
of righteousness." To his son in the Gos- 
pel, the youthful Timothy, he gives this 
advice : " But thou, O man of God, flee 
these things," — the things that are of evil 
report, — " and follow after righteousness, 
godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness," — 



Righteousness. 205 

wherein, as you see, he places righteousness 
at the front, and brings in faith and love 
to grace the sacred procession later in its 
make-up. In the very midst of his great 
argument in view of immortality, in the 15th 
chapter of the first epistle to the Corinthians, 
what is the practical appeal with which he 
startles the church in the corrupt pagan city, 
and which in its own short course had fallen 
into vicious practices? Does he say, Get 
more faith, increase the bright plumes of 
hope, enhance the ardor of love? No; but 
he says, as with trumpet-tones, " Awake to 
righteousness, and sin not." And when the 
great apostle turned from his heroic and 
manly career to contemplate the reward 
that awaited him, what did he say? " Hence- 
forth there is laid up for me a crown of 
righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous 
judge, shall give me at that day." 

So much for Paul. If he could not dis- 
parage love, he could extol, with every form 
of rhetoric and every privilege of situation, 
the grace of righteousness. But he was not 
alone among the sacred writers in wreath- 



206 Faith and Righieoiisness. 

ing this chaplet to adorn the brow of the 
majestic spirit. The terms " righteous " and 
" righteousness " occur in the Bible nearly 
five hundred times. Even as the stars bestud 
the sky, or the rubies glisten in some favored 
soil, or the flowers adorn the summer fields, 
do these great words glow on the pages of 
Scripture. Neither of faith, nor of hope, nor 
of love, is so much said. And all of the 
high literature of the ages shows a similar 
high estimate of the virtue that Peter fore- 
saw in the " new heavens and the new earth." 

Does it not seem passing strange, in look- 
ing over this whole ground of divine and 
human testimony on behalf of the greatness 
and glory of righteousness, that religion, 
which ought to extol it most eloquently and 
urgently, has rather pushed it into the back- 
ground, and spoken of it almost slightingly? 
It has not, for some strange reason, been a 
favorite theological grace; and we all know 
that there have been mouths made up at 
it, that it has been called " filthy rags," and 
that like degrading epithets have been hurled 
at it. The revivalists say little about it in 



Righteousness . 207 

their earnest harangues, making up a cheap 
scheme of salvation, with this grace virtually 
counted out. They say much more of the 
" blood of Jesus" than of the righteousness of 
man. Actually stereotyped and threadbare 
have become the pious warnings to the people 
not to rely on good works and the uprightness 
of their lives. But Paul taught another doc- 
trine ; and as he stood under the great light of 
eternity, discoursing of the resurrection and 
the differing glory of souls, as of the stars, 
he sent his whole heart into that one appeal : 
" Awake to righteousness, and sin not/ 5 

Let us see how these revivalists and St. 
Paul appear as they might stand before two 
contrasting characters to pass sentence on 
them as to which would rank highest in the 
" new heavens and the new earth " that the 
reign of Christ is to bring forth. On the one 
hand is a new convert snatched from the 
purlieus of the city like a brand from the 
burning. He is full of fresh zeal, and prayer 
and song flow out of his soul like a stream 
from a full fountain. Yesterday he was a 
sinner; to-day he is a saint. The mark of 



208 Faith and Righteousness. 

Satan has been erased, and the sign of the 
cross set on his brow. All this is blessed, 
and we have no fault to find with it ; on the 
contrary, we could devoutly wish that all the 
sin-scarred might arise and move on into 
this new light and hope. 

On the other hand, we have a man of ster- 
ling virtue, honored and trusted by all, like 
a ship that has weathered the stormy sea 
again and again, and come off victor. He 
is a man of truth and probity, not espe- 
cially moved by any of the pious emotions, 
and yet not irreverent, but always noble in 
his purposes and just in his deeds, — a good 
solid character in the things that are right 
and equitable. 

To the first of these the revivalists of the 
modern theology would award the palm for 
the best standing in the realm of the Saviour 
and for marching under the rainbow of prom- 
ise towards the heavenly country ; but to the 
second, as I read St. Paul, would he assign 
the foremost place and the most hopeful out- 
look in the " new heavens and the new earth 
wherein dwelleth righteousness. ,, 



Righteousness. 209 

Within the last few years one and an- 
other of the praying ones have passed into 
the ranks of great criminals, — defaulters and 
thieves ; this, however, is no argument against 
prayer and worship, but only against a form 
of religion that exalts these at the expense 
of the moral elements of life. It is a suffi- 
cient testimony to the general utility of 
religion, that were we to go into any large 
city to select a thousand of the best fami- 
lies, w T e should, in the main, take them from 
the church-going circles, from such as ob- 
served the Sunday and gave their thoughts 
to sacred themes ; or, on the contrary, were 
we to seek out a thousand of the worst fami- 
lies, we should search for them amid the non- 
church-going, — those who give no heed to the 
Sabbath bell, nor send their thoughts to con- 
template the great ideals of life. This fact 
shows us that there is some relation between 
religion and a better life, between piety and 
virtue. But that relation would be seen 
in a clearer light if the churches had not 
seemed to permit an unnatural divorce. 
They have woven a fairer crown for faith 



210 Faith and Righteousness. 

than works, for prayer than for good deeds, 
for sanctity than for integrity. But let us 
believe that piety without honesty will not 
take one so near the throne as honesty with- 
out piety. The latter is the weightier grace, 
and carries the better title, as a lord outranks 
a citizen. Happy is he who is clad in all the 
Christian graces, and goes up to the celestial 
court in full dress ; " his feet shod with the 
preparation of the gospel of peace," his soul 
wearing " the sword of the spirit," gleaming 
with the polish of long and faithful use, his 
head crow r ned with the " helmet of salvation," 
and having on the " breastplate of righteous- 
ness ; " but if he must go forth robed in any 
single mantle, let it be the mantle of moral 
excellence. There is no coin so current at 
the open gate as that which bears the mint- 
mark, the image and superscription, of a 
life well lived. Hence, let us take to our- 
selves in the most practical manner the words 
of the text: " Nevertheless we, according to 
his promise, look for new heavens and a new 
earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness." 



VIII. 

THE LAW OF SERVICE. 



VIII. 



The Law of Service. 

And for their sakes I sanctify myself. — John xvii. xg. 

O one accustomed to regard the man 
of Nazareth as belonging to the rank 
of the perfect, these words are met 
in the reading of the New Testament with a 
touch of surprise. How can the waters of 
crystal purity be cleansed and made more 
clear and sparkling? Can the perfect circle 
be still rounded, and an absolute square 
more completely squared? If quantity is, 
without fault, so that beyond every horizon 
another lifts its enchanting line, and after 
every to-morrow a new day awaits to dawn, 
the same is not true of quality; for there is 
a justice that cannot be more just, a love 
that involves every element of the celestial 




214 Faith and Righteousness. 

principle, and an honor that is as free from 
spot and tarnish as the clear blue of the 
Italian sky. And such a final and absolute 
estate of life on its moral side seems to have 
been shared by the Saviour of men. He was 
true as truth, virtuous as virtue, and humane 
as charity itself. In him was no guile. In a 
crooked and perverse world the lines of his 
pathway from Bethlehem to Calvary never 
swerved from a divine standard. He put 
every temptation aside through the majesty 
of a peerless character, and opposed to the 
fiery stings of hatred the cool breath of 
a heavenly love. And yet we read in our 
text that this ideally sacred man sanctified 
himself: " For their sakes I will sanctify my- 
self." What can it mean? Had he fallen 
into a fit of momentary depression, and 
failed to see himself as he was? Or had he 
mingled with the sinful till he had through 
some confusion taken to himself their sense 
of shortcoming? As he made the woes of 
others his own, had he also stepped from 
his own moral centre and adopted the self- 
consciousness of sin common to his neigh- 



The Law of Service. 215 

bors? No, nothing of the kind. He had 
simply felt the claim of humanity upon him, 
and employed this term " sanctify " in its 
external and objective sense, as signifying 
devotement, surrender to an apparent and 
gracious line of conduct, that would be both 
an example and an inspiration to the world, 
and not in its internal sense of moral and 
spiritual consecration. 

For their sakes he would make his love 
and wisdom manifest even in a life of hard- 
ships and a death of ignominy. For their 
sakes he would not restrain and hide the 
truth, but make it known, cost whatever it 
might of personal ease and comfort. For 
their sakes he would choose poverty and 
ridicule and a path stretching along thorny 
and rocky ways, and in lieu of the grateful 
and safe haunts of Galilee accept the fearful 
agony of the Garden and the wild woes of 
Calvary. To these duties he gave himself 
in a spirit of true devotion that has drawn 
encomiums of praise from infidel lips, and 
earned him a crown of fame that shall never 
lose its lustre while the conscience of man is 



216 Faith and Righteousness. 

loyal, and his heart grateful. Great within, 
he would pass on to an outward greatness, 
— the greatness of love and sacrifice. The 
radiance of his soul he would flash along the 
untrod and divine pathways, that the blind 
might see, and the timid take courage, and 
the sinful return, as on a road illuminated 
by the light of a living example. 

The law of the text as it falls from the lips 
of Jesus is therefore the law of service on 
behalf of others, — the putting of our powers 
forth in acts of humanity, the applying of our 
talents in ways that shall tell on the world's 
good. I do not mean to say that it ignores the 
more primary sense of the word " sanctify." 
The imperfect can do nothing better in the 
interest of others than to make nobler their 
inmost life ; for character is, after all, the 
fountain-head of blessed influences, as the 
sun is of light and heat. A true life becomes 
an open secret, and steadily impinges with 
saving sway on the life around it. The great 
power of man for humanity's good is after all 
the silent and sure power of moral greatness. 
Ever thus apart from all conscious aims and 



The Law of Service. 2 1 7 

overt activities lies the divine force of a 
noble spirit daily and hourly casting forth its 
sweet and potent emanations. There is such 
a thing as force of character : that has been 
recognized in all times and lands; and it is 
the supreme force in man. It makes his sway 
out of all proportion to his speech, and gen- 
erates an influence that shall often far outrun 
the survival of his name. It is the mother's 
real sceptre, and the warrior's strongest pan- 
oply. It is the magic charm that makes si- 
lence eloquent and a mere attitude efficient. 
Who does not know that there is nothing 
in the history of Sir Philip Sidney to justify 
the great place he holds in England's and 
the world's estimate? He achieved no signal 
victory on the field of battle, sung no great 
song to inspire the heart, carried no great 
issue in civil affairs to a happy end, left no 
large estates to mitigate the needs of suc- 
cessive generations ; and yet Sidney is a most 
tenderly cherished and deeply honored name, 
and we can only say it is what the man 
was, — the genial sway of a noble life : that 
explains the general reverence of the race. 



218 Faith and Righteousness. 

Something of this contrast between the meed 
of honor and an actual career obtains in 
the case of many of the world's great men. 
Character rather than history floats the name 
on every wind, to touch with a healthy 
potency millions of hearts. 

And this is a general record. The cases I 
have cited but reflect a law old as Adam and 
new as the present hour. And hence we 
must infer the value of inward sanctity as a 
means of grace and blessing to others ; and if 
we are true to our privilege and the great" 
law of love, we shall solemnly lay upon our 
hearts and souls the claim of self-discipline in 
the interest of those near to us and of man- 
kind. For their sakes we shall seek to be 
noble, as in the line of service on nobility's 
behalf. 

But our text speaks to a later issue, and 
commends the unselfish and humane use of 
our already acquired character. It calls us, 
in the light of the Divine example, to do 
something with what we are, to take our gifts, 
as we hold them to-day and every day, and 
cast them forth in the actual service of men. 



The Law of Service. 219 

This is what Jesus did, and this is the first 
and great law of the kingdom of heaven, 
whether it be here among us, or yonder 
amid the radiance of the constellations and 
the unrevealed wonders and glories of eter- 
nity. Helpfulness ! That is the great prin- 
ciple that glows in the Masters words. The 
doing of something from the standpoint of our 
actual being that shall redound to the good 
of our kind ; the emergence from a practical 
hermitage in which so many seem content to 
live, hiding their light as under a bushel, and 
contracting their influence as within the walls 
of a cloister, and standing forth to join the 
great army of toilers for a common weal and 
a broader good, — this is the lesson of the 
text evident on the mere statement. 

Let us now look at the grounds on which 
this law of service reposes, and see how wise 
and urgent they are. Note first that we all 
stand under an immense debt to mankind for 
values received, and must discharge that obli- 
gation, and thus rightly adjust the scale of 
equity by doing for others as others have 
wrought for us. Our inheritance entails upon 



220 Faith and Righteousness. 

us the duty of unselfish toils ; for the man 
who takes but will not give, who gathers but 
will not scatter abroad, who is a recipient but 
refuses to be an almoner, who lives only to 
absorb like a sponge, w r ho hoards like the 
miser, has not met the just claim of humanity 
upon him. He draws from the past, but 
means to cheat the present and rob the fu- 
ture. His are the traits of an ingrained self- 
ishness that greedily appropriates ministra- 
tions but never ministers. For just consider 
what he owes to the toils of others, what 
you and I owe to busy brains and active 
hands, not our own, that have made the world 
for us what it is. It is little that we can do 
for ourselves to make our conditions tolera- 
ble, and especially enviable, in comparison 
with the great sum of labor that must needs 
be done for us. We can do something for our- 
selves, but others have done vastly more for us. 
For really the past, reaching back for ages, 
has been the great workshop for the present, 
and every generation is far more the inheritor 
than the creator of its blessings. All these 
blessings of what we call civilization, — our 



The Law of Service. 221 

sentiments in their refinement, and our hopes 
in their full radiance, — whence came they? 
Not out of the laboratory of to-day and from 
our own toils, but they were wrought for us 
in the days that are past, and by hands long 
since fallen : the toilers of other times have 
made them over to us. All the best things 
of time have been slow growths under the 
patient husbandry put forth by talent and 
genius. Take any of the great sentiments of 
the hour, and it will be easy to see how little 
we have done to make them what they are. 
The idea of God, now so great and beautiful 
a conception, has been toiled at for thousands 
of years and slowly evolved, one great thinker 
after another cutting away an absurdity and 
adding a rational extension, — prophets and 
poets and moralists and the great Teacher of 
Judaea, — and the bettering generations finally 
passing over to us the theology that gives joy 
to the mind and peace to the soul. And 
thus *has it been with the idea of liberty, 
justice, charity, and all the amenities of our 
civilization. These beautiful statues have been 
carved and set up for us, age after age adding 



222 Faith and Righteousness. 

to their fairness and greatness. Often has 
the work gone on under fearful trials and at 
heavy costs, that our inheritance might be 
more to our minds and our hearts. 

And out of this bequest arises a claim. If 
humanity has thus enriched us, then in equity 
humanity may demand something of us ; for 
what is humanity but a perpetuated firm 
whose claims are cancelled only by their 
payment? Truly have we received, and 
hence freely must we give. And yet how 
many are there who clutch their rich bless- 
ings and lug them away into a selfish seclu- 
sion, absorbing the light, but never letting 
it shine; deriving culture from school and 
temple that enriches and sweetens the years, 
but making no return; accepting shelter from 
the state, but ignoring all the duties of the 
citizen ; availing themselves of all the great 
and gracious results of time and toil, but 
meanly holding themselves apart in a selfish 
indifference to the common weal ! But, on 
the contrary, how should all that has been 
done for us, from Adam to the present, lead 
us to accept, in view of the race, the terms of 



The Law of Service. 223 

the text, " For their sakes," and to devote 
something of time and interest and labor and 
means to subserve the good of others ! "For 
our sakes " must be translated into " For 
their sakes" by a worthy industry, a strict 
justice, and a willing generosity, or an un- 
crossed claim will stand on the Divine ledger, 
and some time and some where we shall be 
called to face with shame and, it may be, con- 
sternation, a handwriting on the wall publish- 
ing our neglect of duty. 

Again, the devotion of our powers for 
others in some form of service is a realiza- 
tion of the true ideal of life, and we owe 
something to our best ideals. They are sent 
to us as sacred appeals. Our Saviour saw the 
way of self-sacrifice for the world's good 
open before him, and with the vision came 
the sense of obligation; and he passed on 
through trials to teach the wisdom that has 
been the light of generations, and to take 
up the cross that has touched the heart of 
man with a new love and a new hope. He 
saw and obeyed ; and some of the greatest 
and finest results yet wrought for man came 



224 Faith and Righteousness. 

out of that obedience. And blessed are all 
they that see and obey ; for it is still changing 
the beautiful ideal into the blessed actual, and 
working out the glory of our civilization. 

Love is the first of all the principles, and 
its service the most beautiful activity of hu- 
man nature. Man is of course great and 
noble in spheres that relate wholly to him- 
self, and in accomplishments that carry no 
generous or magnanimous impulses along 
with them ; and neither does reason nor reve- 
lation cut him off from these triumphs. Self- 
culture is a worthy victory. The midnight 
lamp casts on the brow of the patient student 
some beams from the great sun of a true 
credit. The poet who sings his sweet or 
stirring song just for the joy of his own soul 
shares the meed of a true merit. The hero 
who rises to power rises to a not undeserved 
fame. He who amasses a fortune by skill 
and industry, as a shield from self-want and 
a pleasing result for his pains, does a good 
thing. Self is a legitimate centre, and a self- 
centring motion is as needful in life as among 
the stars. Number one is a signal number, 



The Law of Service. 225 

and the personal pronouns "I" and "Me" 
belong to the language and stand there with- 
out any reproach. There must be an " in " as 
well as an " out " ; and self is the first essential 
to the cognition of not-self, and the necessary 
point of radiance. Christianity did not come 
among men to rout them from all that is 
self-centred and personal, and turn life into 
a mere outflow along the channels of phi- 
lanthropy and into exclusive service for 
others ; for this would be a dissipation of our 
powers and a source of universal beggary 
and degradation. And yet that part of life 
which, on wise grounds and in fulfilment of 
the great law of love, goes out in deeds and 
services that ameliorate the lot of man, that 
smooth the path for others to tread, that 
turn despondency into courage, ignorance 
into wisdom, sorrow into joy, and night into 
day, is the part that is likest the offices the 
angels discharge, and the acts of the benefi- 
cent Creator. 

Mark one or two special contrasts which 
will throw light over this general domain of 
life. A man has, in the course of years, 
is 



226 Faith and Righteousness. 

gained a deserved reputation for just deal- 
ing. Never has he swerved from the straight 
line of fairness in any known instance. His 
pounds have been pounds, and his quarts 
never less than the just measure. His yard- 
stick has been up to the standard. His 
manufactures have been equal to his recom- 
mendations. His word has ever been un- 
equivocal, and maintained after the most 
manly fashion. His record runs morally 
clear, and his name passes among men as 
the synonym for integrity. Now, that is a 
high rank to attain. An honest man is a 
noble work of God, and an honor to the race 
of which he forms so rare a part. Probity is 
a royal trait, and he who can be trusted like 
the laws of Nature, in whom there is no guile, 
no obliquity, no moral flaw, is fit to sit in 
honorable company with the great ones of 
earth. 

And yet a life of such strict virtue, and 
nothing more, falls far short of the ideal we 
have learned through Jesus of Nazareth to 
cherish. It is too cold and barren, and im- 
presses us with a painful sense of its insuffi- 



The Law of Service. 227 

ciency. We feel it has passed its time in too 
bleak and barren an atmosphere, — like living 
on some granite plain, instead of in some 
floral, fruitful vale. Add the human senti- 
ment, and how transfigured this life appears ! 
Helpfulness is the sentiment that will exalt 
him, and set the fairer jewels in his crown to 
flash in the face of heaven and earth. He 
must do something for others, in obedience 
to an unselfish law, ere he can stand with the 
noblest ones of the earth. To integrity he 
must add humanity, to carry the column of 
credit to its fairest altitude. " For their 
sakes," who stand around him in one do- 
main of need or another, must he devote 
himself, even as the great Xazarene did, 
that his name may stand in the full glory 
of mercy crowning justice. 

From the individual pass on to institutions, 
and it will appear that those which are based 
on merely commercial grounds, or in the 
interest of secular education or pleasure, do 
not fulfil the demand which our Christian 
training leads us to share in this direction. 
We look for something more humane and 



228 Faith and Righteousness. 

self-sacrificing. There is a further and finer 
principle to be embodied, that will impart to 
institutions a superior aspect. A library set 
up in a city as a private speculation is one 
thing; but a library set up solely as a public 
benefaction realizes and reflects another and 
higher principle. The first is a matter of 
business, and legitimate, for business is on 
the very line of Nature and civilization ; but 
the second is a nobler outgrowth from the life 
of man, representing a later and better attain- 
ment. The first belongs to the natural man, 
the second to the Christian ; for it has been 
the glory of the religion of the New Testa- 
ment that it passed forth through the earth 
to foster organic and social mercy as well as 
individual charity. " For their sakes," — this 
generous impulse becomes at length embod- 
ied in institutions, and adds a fairer grace to 
their existence. 

But personal service for others is ever a 
simpler and safer matter than organized be- 
nevolence ; for into every unselfish and gener- 
ous institution the self-seeker is sure to come, 
at one stage or another, and with a Satanic 



The Law of Service. 229 

greed divert the golden current, touched with 
a divine intent, to his own private emolument 
and advantage. There are those who are so 
cruel and so base that they will even rifle the 
charity-boxes, and steal the bread and the 
raiment from orphans and widows. As 
wolves are said, in the terms of the ser- 
mon on the mount, to array themselves in 
fleecy robes that they may come unsus- 
pected into the flock to slay and gorman- 
dize, so are there men so wolf-like in 
treachery and voracity that they will steal 
into the avenues of public benefactions to 
glut themselves with unholy plunder. In- 
deed, such are more brutal than the brutes ; 
for it is said the lion will not molest anything 
that is sickly and feeble, and the hawk scorns 
to touch the callow and unfledged bird. It 
would seem that these monstrous mortals, 
bankrupt alike in conscience and in humanity, 
can be fitly likened only to the fabled vam- 
pires or the fabled fiends. There is no trace 
of the genuine man left upon them, not to 
speak of the man who has been ennobled and 
humanized by the spirit of the Master. They 



230 Faith and Righteousness. 

would turn grave-robbers if body-snatching 
were only sufficiently profitable, . or would 
sell their own parents or children to base 
purchasers if the price were ample. They 
have no mercy left in them, but will delib- 
erately, for month upon month, devise to 
steal the hard earnings of the poor, and 
awaken the wail of distress along the ranks 
of the weak and old. All the public chari- 
ties are exposed to the craftiness and 
the wiles of these heartless and hardened 
wretches ; and every little while we are stung 
by fresh rascalities of the kind. The offence 
is rank, and smells to heaven, and is an ample 
provocation for drawing forth the lightnings 
of vengeance. And vengeance will come. 
It is no enviable thing to be a fugitive from 
justice, — to think of the past with shame, and 
of the future with dread ; to endure a haunted 
sleep by night, and a remorseful experience 
by day ; to find sweet sounds striking upon 
the soul as a torture, and beauty turning to a 
reproaching angel, and the light of the stars 
piercing the heart like arrows of judgment; 
to wear a dishonored name. In deed and in 



The Law of Service. 231 

truth, does a flaming sword stand between 
such and Paradise; and never but through 
the agony of repentance can they again enter 
the beautiful abode. 

The laws of the universe have not failed, 
and to-day, as of old, there can be no peace 
for the wicked. But while we rest in the 
assurance that these will get their due, with 
all others, from Cain down, it would still 
gratify the temper aroused by such conduct 
to see the fiery bolts falling on guilty souls, 
and to hear the outcry for mercy. 

" For their sakes I sanctify myself," said 
One, eighteen hundred years ago, whom we 
still delight to honor. " For their sakes," — 
what glory in those words ! " For their 
sakes," — oh, had all the cruel and the dishon- 
est ones of the earth felt this Divine impulse, 
it would have turned their hands to tenderer 
and truer offices, and plucked their names 
from the roll of infamy ! " For their sakes," — 
who can recount the fair deeds and the sweet 
joys that have ripened out of that purpose ! 
The mother knows them as she ministers to 
her children ; the reformer knows them as he 



232 Faith and Righteousness. 

shields the tempted and saves the lost; the 
Christian has daily taste of their richness as 
he scatters good cheer along his path, and 
causes hope to sing in many a heart, and 
awakens the nobler sentiments of human 
souls. " For their sakes ! " Let it be em- 
blazoned as one of the central texts of the 
Christian religion, and carried forth in daily 
practice among men ! 



IX. 



CURRENT TENDENCIES IN THOUGHT 
AND LIFE. 



IX. 



Current Tendencies in Thought and Life. 

Can ye not discern the signs of the times ? — Matt. xvi. 3. 

~~T is to be said of to-day with more of 
truth than of any previous era, that 
there are general tendencies of 
thought and life sweeping through it. The 
modern stream of influences is at once wider 
and deeper, and bears more along with it 
than any current known to a past age ; and 
this fact is to be accounted for on several 
grounds. The man or era that is low in the 
scale of development is never so sensitive and 
receptive to any new idea or influence as the 
man or era that has risen above a primitive 
stolidity and indifference. What Paul said of 
the highly cultured Athenians, that they did 
nothing but hear or tell of some new thing, 
could not be said with anything like the same 




236 Faith and Righteousness. 

truthfulness of a ruder people. The ignorant 
rarely change their views, are reluctant to en- 
gage in mental toil, and not prepared to note 
any superiority of the better as compared with 
that which they already hold. Hence, relig- 
ion and life in China and in Turkey rarely or 
never change. There is no flow; no new 
currents arise; a fresh idea meets no hospi- 
tality, and makes no converts ; heresy is un- 
known, and progress makes no part of the 
people's history. But the Greeks delighted 
in mental stir, and coveted the new and un- 
tried. So is it with all advanced states of so- 
ciety. What Paul found at Athens he would 
find in many modern cities and lands, — -an 
openness and eagerness of man towards new 
theories and bold investigations. Hence any 
new scheme of philosophy, or new conjecture 
in science, or new notion in political economy, 
or new announcement in theology, that in an 
earlier day would have passed by unnoticed, 
is now hailed with delight, as affording a fresh 
study, and is likely to carry the franchise and 
favor of the people on the score of their ex- 
clusive gaze at it, which for the time leaves 



Tendencies in Thought and Life. 237 

all antagonistic and often more truthful views 
out of sight. 

But the modern stream of tendency, what- 
ever it may be, is not only accelerated by 
our mental eagerness, but by the increased 
means of communication. Once a new idea 
and influence came among men at a great 
disadvantage. A fresh view could only wait 
in some corner for a long time, and from its 
obscure nook it could only go abroad on foot, 
as it were, toiling on slowly from mind to 
mind. Or, to vary the figure, any new stream 
rising among men could only flow along for 
a good while as a mere rivulet in the human 
landscape, and must needs pass slowly into 
the proportions of a river or a tide. Hence 
there were no startling currents of idea and 
impulse suddenly rushing forth among the 
people in those slow days. But it is no 
longer thus. Ideas now travel literally with 
the swiftness of the lightning, and any man's 
morning verity or heresy may be flashed 
across the nations before the setting of the 
day's sun, and countless hosts will be found 
taking sides, and a new stream of tendency 



238 Faith and Righteousness. 

will swiftly appear on the scene. Since the 
era of the printing-press, and travel by steam, 
and conversation by electricity across conti- 
nents and seas, the intelligent masses have 
become much as a single mind and heart, and 
are passing at each hour or day or week into 
much the same interests and biases and drift- 
ings. Hence we live in an era that is one of 
sudden and turbulent currents. But there is 
nothing to be greatly deplored in this mod- 
ern fact, since if the tides rush in, they also 
rush out; action and reaction being equally 
speedy, the swift heresy will the sooner spend 
itself, the rapid stream of error will quickly 
reach its limit, and the happy re-flow begin ; 
and the better and diviner tides, rushing thus 
over the world, will the more readily scatter 
their blessings, leaving the wide green fields 
and rich glowing fruits. No longer can the false 
be as enduring as once ; a cloud of error can no 
longer hang a thousand years in the sky as in 
the olden days : for some better thinker, rising 
here or there, it matters little where, will shoot 
the light of truth into it, and lo ! the age will 
instantly stand in the radiance of that light. 



Tendencies in Thought and Life. 239 

Let us now briefly review some of the cur- 
rents flowing along amid our own time. A 
marked tendency of our day is one that ap- 
pears on all sides, — a tendency to a more 
rational and free thought than has charac- 
terized any past age. Whereas authority, 
tradition, blind assent, held supreme sway a 
thousand years ago, a vast sway even a hun- 
dred years back, and holds a wide sway still, 
yet the tendency is to rationalize more and 
more, and put every question and usage to a 
new test. The intellect, so long asleep, or so 
long oppressed in the presence of custom and 
authority, is now well awakened. It has won 
a privilege since the Protestant Reformation 
that is the most signal victory of modern 
times. The mind is the dominant factor in 
the life of our time, and it fearlessly peers into 
realms, and criticises ideas and customs, which 
a century ago it dared not approach. Its 
advance has been hotly contested, and is still ; 
but its progress has been steady, till to-day it 
can be truly said, that the Bible, the priest, the 
Church, and the venerableness of antiquity 
have no authority with the foremost minds 



240 Faith and Righteousness. 

on the old grounds of their avowed sacred- 
ness, but only as the one or the other meets 
the rational demand. Of course a thousand 
superstitions once cherished, and customs once 
honored, have been obliged to flee before this 
advancing reason. All along the path of this 
mental ascendency lie the ruins of old creeds 
and ancient rites ; and we are beginning to 
smile at the ideas and usages that once enter- 
tained as a matter of course, and that we 
should then have called in question with a 
sort of horror and loss of sleep. The new T ten- 
dency of theology has sternly opposed these. 
On mam- a field the Church of Rome and 
the Church of John Calvin and the Church 
of John Wesley and the Church of John 
Murray has marshalled itself in line of battle 
to arrest the march of mind along its rational- 
izing path. The custodians of the past have 
not liked the free thought and bold research 
of the modern time. The lingering pagan- 
isms have cried aloud as an independent rea- 
son has confronted them. The demons do 
not like to be cast out. Error shares a love 
of life. Tradition stoutly and angrily urges 



Tendencies in Thought and Life. 241 

the old plea that possession is nine points of 
the law. But all this is in vain. The new 
era of thought has swept on, till at length the 
better classes of people are calmly and fear- 
lessly sitting down to every problem to study 
it out and comprehend its merit or lack of 
merit. 

The preacher at length is only a debater 
with the people, and carries none of his old- 
time authority. He has lost his clerical pre- 
rogative ; his priestly robe serves him to no 
purpose. A hundred years ago in New Eng- 
land the men of the congregation formed on 
the Sabbath morning an escort outside the 
church door, and lifted their hats as the 
parson, in flowing gown, passed up between 
the two columns to the temple-door. From 
the pulpit, lifted far into the air, to signify the 
superiority of its occupant, he gave forth 
a message that was accepted, and not dis- 
cussed. But to-day the minister in the fore- 
most communities is only one who is offering 
the people his side of the great debates that 
are now going on, and who expects the peo- 
ple will make up their minds about as they 
16 



242 Faith and Righteousness. 

please on his messages ; who expects to meet 
his hearers during the week on the street 
corner, and have them tell him that his last 
Sunday's sermon seemed quite rational, or 
quite out of joint with reason. He no longer 
expects them to take his word as a finality. 
And every true minister will desire nothing 
better than this, since free-thinking is the 
hope of truth and the only basis of a deep 
and vital conviction. In fact, every true min- 
ister must see that one great reason why 
religion has rested so lightly and loosely upon 
the life of many has been that it has not come 
to them through their free thought and the 
rational avenue. If religion has not a sure 
friend in logic, and will not fare best in an 
open field of discussion, so much the worse 
for religion ; for logic is to be the method of 
the future, and an open field is the arena into 
w r hich the age is crowding. 

But this rationalizing tendency is likely for 
a time to err through exclusiveness. The 
reason of man, thus now emancipated and 
become the fashion of the day, needs to guard 
against a harmful usurpation. God has set 



Tendencies in Thought and Life. 243 

around the reason a group of instincts and 
sentiments to aid and inspire it, and to render 
it a surer guide. Left alone, it is quite inade- 
quate; but accepting the joint guidance of 
the attendant gifts of our being, the moral 
sense, the spiritual instinct, and the heart, 
and the finer eye that notes the beautiful in 
all things, it becomes a much safer pilot on 
the high sea of thought. Already do we see 
signs of the times that reason is sweeping 
along alone and in a headstrong fashion ; for 
we can but mark the spreading atheism and 
agnosticism of the time, which came of an 
exclusive adherence to reason, that can never 
find alone the path to God and the goal of 
faith, but only as it takes into its company 
the higher and nobler gifts of our being in 
making the great search. 

Now, this sad tendency of the time, which 
all can discover who look for it, comes with an 
exclusive devotion to reason, and from stand- 
ing persistently in the light of the intellect 
alone. We can only be agnostics thus, and 
give life to a mortal outlook and to earthly 
interests. An unchecked mental tendency 



244 Faith and Righteousness. 

drifts us into this dark and cold domain 
as the flowing Nile would drift us into the 
African desert. Follow the mind as your sole 
guide, and you will make a pretty sure and 
speedy journey into the winter-land of doubt 
and bleakness. Even as the exclusive math- 
ematician would miss many of the finer lights 
and nobler sentiments of life, as real as the 
science of numbers, so the exclusive rational- 
ist is but a partial human being, and sees but 
narrowly and in part the universe he lives in. 
But thither our time is drifting. To that goal 
the eager intellect is sweeping us on. Bfit we 
need not be alarmed. Our world has never 
yet fallen to pieces, and it is not likely to do so 
in the nineteenth century. " There is a power 
not ourselves," as Matthew Arnold says, "that 
makes for righteousness." " If man deviseth 
his way, the Lord directeth his steps." Na- 
ture is full of reactions and recoveries. In 
other words, man is not all intellect or reason, 
but there are other and even nobler gifts con- 
ferred upon him to stand in alliance with the 
reason, even as the fingers are given to aid 
the thumb, — I refer, of course, to the soul, 



Tendencies in Thought and Life. 245 

the conscience, and the heart, that lie open 
to the spiritual realm. In short, the action 
of the total man gives another verdict than 
the atheistic or agnostic, and this action is 
sure to transpire in the course of time. An 
age of unbelief has many times been rounded 
by one of faith; and there is no reason to 
think it will ever be otherwise, since the gift 
that debates and falls short of religious con- 
viction is no more human than are the gifts 
that yield spiritual insight and apprehension 
and faith. 

Not so much a doubter and sceptic is the 
natural man, the man with all his being in 
action, as he is a believer and a worshipper 
and a seeker after a higher life and an immor- 
tality. As a being with a one-sided develop- 
ment, the reason alone being brought into 
action, he may doubt, and most likely will; 
but as a being with all his gifts coming for- 
ward abreast, the intuitions and affections 
fulfilling their offices, he will find an easy 
path to faith, and give soaring wings to hope. 
Hence the poets rarely doubt, and woman 
is seldom sceptical, since the mind in such 



246 Faith and Righteousness. 

cases is befriended by the sentiment. There 
transpires in them a more total action of the 
gifts of their being. It is the scientist who is 
least likely to stand in the wholeness of his 
nature and to approach religion in a hopeful 
breadth of vision. Turning exclusively to the 
earth, and hunting only for the laws of matter, 
he dismisses the powers that look up and seek 
the Divine, and which, adequately active, 
never fail to feel its mystic presence. 

As an offset to this agnostic and atheistic 
tendency we find a new current or drift aris- 
ing among the friends of religion, from which 
great good will result. The debate in the 
interest of faith is now pushed forward to an 
attempt to establish the existence of God and 
the reality of the soul and the hope of immor- 
tality. The contest wages at this high point 
and about these vast questions; and it looks 
even now as if a thousand petty issues of 
creed and custom were being subordinated to 
a loftier reflection and effort. The mere de- 
tails of faith are trivial in comparison with the 
existence of faith itself. A host of once prom- 
inent questions are of little import to-day, 



Tendencies in Thought and Life. 247 

since the few great primary questions over- 
shadow them. The age does not care to hear 
a multitude of things about God till it is first 
assured that he is, nor a recital of the spirit- 
ual details of time and eternity till it gives in 
its consent, on adequate grounds, to the reality 
of the spirit and the fact of another life. These 
previous questions are now the serious ones, 
and the thought of the time is turning in that 
direction ; and the result will be a new unity 
among religious thinkers, a meeting in good 
fellowship of the religious orders, a dropping 
out of countless credal trivialities and rising 
to the broadest issues, a common foe making 
a common friendship and a common cause. 
Perhaps the religious world needed just this 
modern drift of doubt, this agnostic and athe- 
istic turn of affairs, to draw it into a more 
happy and efficient harmony, and to secure 
the dismissal of little questions around which 
animosity and strife have raged, but out of 
which no saving grace has ever flowed. 

Another current or tide that is sweeping 
through our time is the tendency to luxuriance 
on the earthly side. When the soul does not 



248 Faith and Righteousness. 

supply to the world its themes and aspirations, 
the senses do, and the carnal commands more 
than its share of interest. As higher lights 
cease to lure, lower ones come into view and 
beckon us on ; and just now with multitudes 
the devotion is in the direction of the tempo- 
ral. The reigning sports are athletic, — walk- 
ing, rowing, racing. The chief sacrifices are 
made to the eye, — in costumes, arts, and equi- 
pages. The great divinity is money. The 
age is signal in its tremendous enterprises, — 
its commerce, its railroads, its telegraphs, its 
arts and inventions. The world is a busy 
workshop, and in the din and uproar many 
of the finer voices are unheard. And all this 
is but the culmination of the worldly tendency 
launched by Bacon three hundred years ago 
to counteract the puerile and destructive spec- 
ulations of the dreaming monks and priests 
who had the people under their sway. Bacon 
demanded an interest in this lower world, a 
devotion to the body, a regard for temporal 
comforts and conveniences ; and directly the 
age turned from scholasticism to science, 
from dreaming to ploughing and sow T ing and 



Tendencies in Thought and Life. 249 

reaping, from building castles in the air to 
piling marble and granite warehouses and 
homes, from discussing how many angels 
could dance on the point of a needle to a 
debate on political economy and the number 
of people that a nation may feed and clothe, 
from the making of priestly robes and altar 
gew-gaws to the manufacture of boots and 
shoes, from a chant in the cloister to a service 
for man amid the daily rounds of life. The 
age was waiting for a Bacon, and has indeed 
followed him too exclusively ; but when this 
worldly tendency has had its day, and the no- 
bler gifts come back to their sphere, then man 
will stand far along in the path of progress, 
the temporal and the spiritual rising in a 
grand fellowship. The material frame will be 
but the fit setting of the nobler jewel of life. 

Another sign of the times, to be contem- 
plated with greater pleasure, is the growth of 
benevolence in the community. The heart 
of the world is larger and tenderer than it 
ever was before. This part of religion has 
shown no signs of decline. There is a great 
and growing sympathy with the people, and 



250 Faith and Righteousness. 

the old creeds have had to yield and modify 
just at the point where they failed of showing 
a true love and compassion. The age, as 
never before, is averse to cruelty in creed 
and in act. The demand is that the pagan 
shall have a chance for salvation, if not in this 
life, then in the next; that the dying infant 
shall somewhere find a love to embrace and 
caress it ; that the unsaved in this little round 
of time shall still be pursued by the offices 
of grace and discipline as they come to the 
world beyond. Just here the heart of the 
time is too strong for the stern faith of an 
earlier day, and theology must own its sway. 
And out of the same growing humanity are 
blooming in great numbers those whitest 
flowers of earth, — the asylums and charities, 
the bequests of w r ealth, and the kindly deeds 
of men and women along the dark and sad- 
dened paths that their brothers and sisters 
are called to tread. And this new and lovely 
stream is ever flowing out upon the animal 
race, and, as never before, mercy and gentle- 
ness befriend the useful and interesting 
brute. 



Tendencies in Thought and Life. 251 

Thus, on the whole, the signs of the times 
are encouraging; the stream of tendencies 
flowing along these days is hopeful; and as 
we must think it is better to live to-day than 
it was to live a hundred years ago, so we 
may well conclude it will be better to spend 
the passing years of earth in the next century 
than it is in this. The coming age will be 
the more favored one ; since, in the words of 
Tennyson, — 

"Through the ages one increasing purpose runs, 
And the thoughts of men are widened with the process 
of the suns." 



X. 

THE LAW OF THE CHRISTIAN SPIRIT. 



The Law of the Christian Spirit. 

The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus. — Rom. viii. 2. 

T hardly need be said, in this scientific 
age, that law is a universal presence. 
We cannot descend so deep, nor 
rise so high, nor journey so far, as to escape 
its sway. Like the Deity, it is omnipresent; 
and in the last analysis it is no doubt a cor- 
relative of his existence, an expression of 
his will, a determination of his love. Its 
empire is without beginning, and without 
end, and without limit in space ; because God 
is thus boundless in time and presence. 

Law moves alike through an atom and 
a planet; and not an insect glittering with 
bright hues in the morning sun, nor a seraph 
glowing in moral and spiritual beauty in the 
finer light of the Divine kingdom, lives out- 




256 Faith and Righteousness. 

side its great circle of operations. Law em- 
braces all, moves in all motion, rests in all 
repose; it knows no such thing as retreat 
from the field of its engagements, or respite 
from the constancy of its service. 

Science tracks it into the secret recesses 
of matter and of life ; and where scientific 
search ends, because its eye grows dull, or 
its implements of detection clumsy, still 
science gives law credit for existence and 
sway. That which, regarded from one angle, 
shall seem like chance and caprice, will ap- 
pear, if looked at from another side, as 
standing in some sequence of order. 

Thus the text speaks of the " law of the 
spirit of life in Christ Jesus." Note first that 
the Christian shares a " spirit of life." There 
is an active impulse in his soul. He has a 
spirit in him as a condition of life, a char- 
acter, a realm of sentiment or feeling. The 
Saviour likens this inner state, in its removal 
from dormancy and inactivity, to meal in 
the state of fermentation. The Christian 
soul is charged with the grace and motion 
of a finer leaven. This spirit of life is noth- 



The Law of the Christian Spirit. 257 

ing else than the mind and temper of the 
Master, that stood in such happy contrast 
with the crude thought and the hard dis- 
position of that pharisaic age, drawn over 
into a believing soul. Are your ideas those 
of the New Testament, and your sentiments 
such as shine along those great pages? Then 
that is the spirit of life in Christ to you. 
You have thus clothed your higher nature 
with the living robes that so adorned the 
Nazarene. 

If you thus accept Christ by a deep and 
worthy assimilation, his conceptions and 
impulses will be repeated in you. You 
will be one with him in fulfilment of his 
ardent prayer, as you will also be one with 
that greater life of the Father of which Jesus 
was but the symbol. To take the man of 
Nazareth to ourselves in any sense more 
superficial than this, is not to attain to a 
true discipleship. We shall thus be nominal 
Christians, and not real; we shall wear the 
badge, but lack the living spirit of a follower. 

Let us pass now to consider the manifesta- 
tions of the Christian life. And here you 
17 



258 Faith and Righteousness. 

will see how surely this inner spirit is under 
the sway of uniform laws of expression. In 
all the Christian centuries Christian character 
has moved along certain great and noble 
channels of activity. Not more surely does 
the trunk of the tree throw out its branches 
after an established order, than the spirit of 
life drawn from the New Testament breaks 
into well-known lines of conduct. The laws 
of its unfolding have not changed in these 
eighteen centuries, any more than the law of 
the sun's shining, or the law of the flower s 
blooming. The law of gravitation is not 
more fixed than that of the spirit of life in 
Christ. 

We may note this law, first, as a movement 
from the soul towards humanity. In Jesus 
there was seen for the first time a sympathy 
that swept past the limits of nation and reli- 
gious order, and embraced all the race, irre- 
spective of special distinctions. The pagan 
had not done this, and no more had the 
Jew. In all the long past the heart had been 
checked from its greatest and noblest ex- 
pansion. The lines were drawn, beyond which 



The Law of the Christian Spirit. 259 

it sought not to pass on a Divine mission. 
The Roman loved and befriended the Roman, 
the Greek the Greek, the Jew the Jew; but 
to neither did it occur as a duty and an ideal 
of life to honor and serve man as man. The 
generalization was too great and grand for 
them, under their narrow training, to com- 
prehend and accept. They had not risen 
to the worship of a universal and impartial 
God, but their deities were hedged around 
by local and special interests. Deities were 
tribal, or they were sectarian; and it was not 
in the nature of things that their devotees 
should send out their sympathies beyond 
these limits. But in Christ we find a new 
expanse of love, that reached down to the 
lowest depths of human life, and out to 
its farthest limit; and this was because he 
came to possess a new and immeasurably 
grander idea of God. His love flowed along 
only with the Divine love, as heat moves 
along with the far-shining beams of the sun. 
A sense of the common Fatherhood lifted 
him out of merely Judasan relations and 
Hebrew limits into a unity with the race. 



260 Faith and Righteousness. 

It made him, not a citizen of the kingdom 
of David, but a cosmopolitan, a citizen of a 
kingdom whose scope includes all time and 
all space, the poorest of mortals and the 
sublimest of the angels. His heart burst 
open and its love flowed along the pathways 
of this great idea. He stood forth as the 
true " son of man " and elder brother of 
human kind, because he was thus the true 
" son of God." It was a regnant law of the 
spirit of his life to be thus unselfish as he 
was, to do good to any and every one, 
and to set in motion a wave of blessing that 
should sweep to the ends of the earth and 
turn all this great field of mortal life at 
length into a garden, and then pass on to 
make a boundless paradise in eternity. 

The disciples have in all cases grown in 
sympathy and fellow-helpfulness as they have 
caught this spirit of Jesus and of God ; for 
its law is that of overflow and outflow. The 
light is its true symbol ; that would carry 
illumination and beauty and cheer into all 
darkness. Mark the expansion that came 
over Peter, so that in his dream he saw a 



The Law of the Christian Spirit, 261 

radiant vision of a sheet, as it were, gathered 
up at the four corners of the world, and in- 
cluding all souls, to bear them forth for the 
Divine blessing ; and in his waking state ready 
to exclaim, in terms that the ages had not 
heard : " Of a truth I perceive that God is no 
respecter of persons : but in every nation he 
that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, 
is accepted with him." But the more signal 
transformation was wrought in Paul. At first 
a Pharisee of the Pharisees, he finally became 
a marvel of catholicity and humanitarianism. 
His hardness melted away under the new 
spirit of Christianity, and a mellower soul 
has not graced the court of love. He knew 
neither Jew nor Gentile, and felt himself to 
be a debtor both to the Greeks and the bar- 
barians. His prayers rose for all. No man 
was beneath his notice, and none were so 
blessed that he would not gladly have multi- 
plied their joys. He bore the "glad tid- 
ings" forth as far as his voice could reach, 
his "enthusiasm of humanity" leading him 
oft into perils by sea and land ; and from his 
pen he sent forward to all the future genera- 



262 Faith and Righteousness. 

tions the words that he felt would guide and 
gladden them. Especially did he commend 
the broad and tender love that he had ex- 
emplified. From Christ he took this great 
principle, — greater than faith, because more 
unselfish, and nobler than hope, because 
more practical, — and to do some good every- 
day was the law of his existence. 

And all along the centuries, from that time 
to this, has Christian love bloomed into broad 
and beautiful sympathies and fair deeds. 
This is ever the ministering spirit. The 
chivalry of the Middle-Age knighthood was 
but its bright manifestation in a dark period. 
Our modern humanities unfold from its rich 
depths. The great missionary enterprises of 
the Church issue from the same source, — 
a Christian love of man that would carry 
to him a better condition in time, and the 
unspeakable boon of an eternal salvation. 
There is no land where some Judson or 
Xavier has not penetrated to tell the story 
of the Cross and to ameliorate the hard lot of 
man. With a heroism that does honor to the 
heart, do these men, touched with this broad 



The Law of the Christian Spirit. 263 

love, go forth over the earth; and, as we 
should expect, this religion of ours alone 
unfurls its banner under all the constella- 
tions, pleading for human welfare in vast 
regions where the voice of neither Moslem 
nor Brahmin is heard, It is the necessity of 
its superior love. Moslem regards Moslem, 
and Brahmin subserves Brahmin; and there 
their affection stays its career in content, a 
diviner breath does not sweep it still on. But 
a true Christian is moved with a good-will 
that overarches the race like a finer sky, and 
that must needs do so, since it is inspired from 
the soul of Jesus and allied with the love of 
the Universal Father. The Christian world is 
full of deeds that make the earth beautiful, 
and the air sweet, and the days and months 
cheery, that emanate from this same welling 
fountain. Many are the gifts to our common 
humanity, cast as bread on the w r aters, which 
owe their origin and practical development to 
this expansive sentiment. 

But let us note a second law of the spirit of 
life in Christ Jesus: it is the law of integ- 
rity, the law of a strict honesty. In the 



264 Faith and Righteousness. 

great Nazarene there could be nothing sini- 
ster, no deviation from the right line of truth 
and fairness, no turning from the high path of 
the Golden Rule and the road of honor, since 
his spirit was so dominantly of the moral order, 
and borne on by so absolute a preponderance 
of virtue. Its law was the law of obedience, 
even like that which carries the shining ones 
in Heaven to the discharge of their upright 
and beautiful tasks. It seems to me strange 
that the Church has made so much of some 
of the inferior traits of this New Testament 
life, and so little of its rightness or righteous- 
ness. His piety is glorified in sermons and 
songs almost without end. His humility is 
praised, and his forbearance under irritating 
provocations. And the Church is not slow to 
magnify his trust in Providence, even like that 
of the lily and the fowls of the air. And not 
to the extent of a single shade would we tone 
down the bright colors in which these graces 
are disclosed. But they are not the great 
traits of his character, that set him most 
notably on the pinnacle of earthly glory and 
make him the one sublime and unapproached 



The Law of the Christian Spirit. 265 

model of life. The two wings that bear him 
up to his high place are his comprehensive 
and unfailing love, and his matchless integrity. 
If he was without hardness, so was he without 
guile. His charity was not more marked than 
his conscience. His every act was level as 
the beam that the true mechanic places in the 
faithful edifice. And truthfully has one of 
the famous infidels paid him this com- 
pliment: "If he died like a hero, he lived like 
a god." 

But this nobility was the inevitable method 
of his spirit's unfolding. It was simple fealty 
to the law of character carried to that moral 
altitude. And by as much as we share this 
inward integrity shall we find ourselves mov- 
ing along the paths that the daylight will not 
serve to bring under the shadow of reproach, 
but rather to glorify. The true Christian is 
under the supreme sway of the moral law. 
He opens out into fairness as the lily in its 
purity. The Christ-like spirit is just by as 
sure a measure as it is generous. The spirit 
of life as it is in Christ bears men by its sure 
law of integrity along, the nobler pathway, 



266 Faith and Righteousness. 

and steadily through the just and honorable 
career. 

Again, the law of the spirit of life in Christ 
Jesus is a law of gladness. The true Chris- 
tian is borne out of the region of gloom by 
the ideas and the sentiments and the elevated 
character he has attained. He may have his 
sad hours ; but he shares the basis of more 
happy ones than any other mortal, since he 
moves along in a nobler and fairer world. 
His character entitles him to joyance, being 
as it is a ground of self-respect and a centre 
of the purest and sweetest emotions. It car- 
ries him clear of the gloom of remorse, and 
the stings of envy, and the fears of venge- 
ance ; while it sets him into open and glad- 
dening relations with " the true, the beautiful, 
and the good/' with the glorious realm of 
better ideas and principles and beings. 
Christian character is sensitive to the finer 
influences, as the ^Eolian harp lies open to 
the touch of the breeze. What a joy in 
the love and the integrity of which I have 
already spoken as characterizing Christ and 
the Christian! The normal key of these 



The Law of the Christian Spirit. 267 

great sentiments is major, and not minor. 
They are naturally exultant in their spirit. 
A long face and a doleful voice were once 
a Christian fashion ; but they as poorly be- 
come the life that is noble and the heart 
that is kindly as sackcloth becomes the wild 
and free spirit of youth. As the Church 
rises into a truer Christianity in its creed 
and its spirit it very naturally gathers flow- 
ers around its altars, and hosannas into its 
music, and cheer into its literature, and glad- 
ness into its homes. It was only in an age 
when art had not yet become glorified with 
the brightness of the Xew Testament religion 
that such pictures as the Ecce Homo and the 
Mater Dolorosa could be the favorite and 
popular ideals. To-day the Saviour is more 
regarded in the joyous scenes of his great 
career, as he pauses to teach by the seaside, 
and sits in the pleasant home in Bethany, and 
grows rapt in eloquence among the Twelve at 
the Last Supper. And Mary is less fitly set 
forth as the Sorrowing Mother than as the 
bright-faced Madonna. And so are all the 
inspirations of the Christian religion truly 



268 Faith and Righteousness. 

cheerful, and the law of disciplehood is a 
law of gladness. 

Once more : let me suggest that it is a law 
of this inner spirit, born of the Redeemer, to 
repose in a clear and strong assurance of im- 
mortality. It shares a sense of the enduring, 
feels its oneness with the realm that does not 
fade away, and carries its lamp of hope 
brightly burning. Its faith in the future is 
not a philosophy, is not a tradition, is not a 
baseless dream ; but as we know there is a 
land of flowers around us w T hen their fragrance 
is borne in upon us and made evident to the 
senses, so does the Christian soul know the 
immortal sphere from the great inspirations 
that stream in from it, the bright radiance 
that is not of this world, the music that comes 
from afar, and the love that answers back to 
the love that goes forth in quest. As we 
know the spring is before us when we feel 
the soft air coming from the South, and the 
milder influence of the sunshine, so does the 
spiritual man anticipate heaven on the score 
of impressions that sweep in from that quar- 
ter. As in the seaweed Columbus found 



The Law of the Christian Spirit. 269 

an evidence of a world lying somewhere 
beyond him, so in the glimpses of light 
that float around us, and the whisperings 
as from some higher realm of being that 
address our better moods, does the Christian 
spirit find the witness of the land of immortal 
blessedness. 




XI. 

THE SONG OF MERCY AND JUDGMENT. 




XL 

The Song of Mercy and Judgment, 

I will sing of mercy and judgment : unto thee, O Lord 5 will I sing. — 
Ps. ci. i. 

N all ages singing has been regarded, 
and with reason, as one of the signs 
of inward satisfaction. Admitting 
that there may be forced songs, the seeming 
joy not to be found in the heart; that art 
sometimes carries music rather than feeling, 
so that the song is simply a performance and 
not a spontaneity, and represents skill more 
than emotion ; that even melancholy has a 
monotonous wail that must be classed as mu- 
sical, — still it holds true, upon any broad 
view of the matter, that singing and satisfac- 
tion, music and gladness, songs and joys, are 
found in company. Singing is of the heart, 
and of the heart when moved by pleasurable 
sensations, We cannot sing in any natural 
18 




274 Faith and Righteousness. 

way, in any sense that is really song, in re- 
sponse to evil, or wickedness, or calamity, or 
cruelty, or dark and repellant views. We 
cannot do this except we are monstrous in 
our nature. If there are fiends, they may 
rejoice and be moved to music through occa- 
sions that carry in their aspects only the 
blackness of darkness. But the human heart 
cannot do this. It must have its songs called 
out by some attractive light, some gleam of 
beauty or glow of blessing. It must be 
touched and stirred, as with an enchanters 
wand ; it must come under the influence of 
ideas and inspirations that partake of favoring 
characteristics, to sing in view of them. 

Looking at the matter thus, we can under- 
stand how David, the singer of Israel, could 
sing of mercy ; for mercy is that attribute of 
character whose quality and offices are not 
equalled in their exaltation and beauty and 
joy-producing power by any other. It is the 
very queen of graces in its essence and its 
functions. 

The goodness of God is something much 
more general than his mercy, but is yet less 



The Song of Mercy and Judgment. 275 

touching and affecting, is less potent over 
the deeper heart, and less sovereign over the 
keys of song. Goodness is the outflow of the 
Divine nature toward the whole animate uni- 
verse, including animal and man, superintend- 
ing their creation in the interest of their 
highest good, and securing to them countless 
conditions of felicity; but mercy is the re- 
serve of a Diviner spirit, to be evinced toward 
the sinful and the guilty, toward man in his 
self- abuse and aberration and depravity, and 
takes the form of forbearance, and long-suffer- 
ing, and forgiveness, and efforts to restore, 
and wonderful sacrifices to effect salvation. 
Goodness gave being to all creatures, and 
gave with that being all the needful conditions 
of felicity, — not of a mere existence on hard 
terms, but of life crowned with the resources 
and occasions of rare delight. But mercy 
gave to a disobedient race, — recreant to its 
opportunities, gone wide astray in forbidden 
ways, ungrateful, scoffing at sacred names 
and things, lost in sin, wretched in self-incur- 
red consequences, — mercy gave to such a 
race a Divine pity, a helping hand, a Saviour, 



276 Faith and Righteousness. 

a wonderful abounding of love to aid in set- 
ting matters to rights. Mercy comes on a 
mission of redemption. It comes to sinners, 
and waits for them, and works for them, and 
gives itself for them, that it may save them. 
It is the angel that follows after every wan- 
derer, carrying persuasion in one hand, and 
pardon in the other. It is grace abounding 
and superabounding against sin, the Divine 
Heart refusing to let the sinner have his 
own way and suffer the bitter results of his 
own folly. It would shield and reclaim. It 
would find the lost. It yearns with compas- 
sion toward them, and is full of pity for them. 
It cannot forget them, nor cast them away 
and be at peace. It is never footsore in its 
pursuit of those who fly from their true good. 
And is there any love like this redeeming love, 
and any song like the song of redemption? 

We would not underrate the Divine good- 
ness that makes general provisions for all 
life on so liberal and loving a scale ; that 
lays infinite skill and infinite power and in- 
finite patience under tribute to devise and 
to provide for all beings, from the lowest 



The Song of Mercy and Judgment. 277 

zoophyte up to the highest seraph, adjust- 
ments that are so generous and so joy-giving. 
To that goodness the living universe, through 
all its gradations, owes a debt of gratitude 
for ministrations of favor. There is not a 
being exempt, not one. The smile of Provi- 
dence carries summer and gladness even 
to microscopic animalcules. And as being 
enlarges, and capacity is made more lib- 
eral, favor increases. Demand is met with 
generous supply. 

Behold what is spread before the eye of 
diversified beauty ! the manifold and abso- 
lutely marvellous arrangement of forms and 
colors, the uncounted and countless visual 
charms of jewels and precious stones, of 
grasses and flowers, of leaves and fruits, of 
birds and beasts, of clouds and stars, and 
of the " human face divine," — so far as the 
divineness still holds ! Surely the eye is a 
debtor to God. And not less is the mind, 
that, instead of being confined and kept in 
darkness, is called to a free range of a realm 
of ideas that includes the glory of theology, 
the charms of poetry, the lofty themes of 



278 Faith and Righteousness. 

science, the enchantments of art, the inspira- 
tions of history, the stirring conceptions of 
the living present, and the radiant visions 
of prophecy. And has the heart been over- 
looked, or has the soul been left without 
remembrance? Nay; the Divine goodness 
is equally liberal in its furnishings forth for 
every attribute of animal and man and angel. 
That providing Hand never withholds, never 
grudges, never puts any on short allow- 
ance. No obscure infinitesimal of life, no 
subordinate faculty of any being, is over- 
looked. The goodness of God, surely, should 
inspire the song of the heart. We would 
have none underrate the glory of this attri- 
bute of Deity, but would have all sensible of 
their indebtedness to it. 

And yet I see something in the Divine 
mercy, in the spirit of God in his relation 
to a world of sinners, that makes my heart 
more exultant than any survey of the more 
general attribute of goodness. A God of 
compassion in view of the disobedient, of 
impleading, of pardon, who goes down and 
stoops and condescends and waits and loves 



The Song of Mercy and Judgment. 279 

and bears helpfulness to prodigals, guilty, 
scoffing; who opens his arms and his heart 
to their return; who never fails to be gra- 
cious; who is ever close by to listen to 
the first cry of the guilty soul; who is 
never asked for even in the faintest way 
but he is at hand, ready to serve and to 
soothe, to give his smile and offer his in- 
finite companionship ; who sent his Son, 
not to condemn, but to save; who asks 
only the sinner's return in love and peni- 
tence, no matter how empty handed and 
tattered he comes, and he shall be reinstated 
in full favor ; who glows with grace towards 
him, and forgets all and forgives all the mo- 
ment he turns from sin : it is such a God 
that most calls for my exaltation. 

There is a principle involved in this view 
that nothing else, so far as we know, can 
equal. Love tow r ards innocence and beauty 
is fair to look at, and its expressions are 
well calculated to affect us. But all this love 
is only the beginning of the end. Love can 
take a step that shall pale and eclipse these. 
And this it does every time it steps over 



280 Faith and Righteousness. 

the limit of regard for mere innocence and 
beauty, and enters the arena of mercy towards 
the bad. 

When we see the mother standing over 
against the disobedient child, the bad boy 
or the bad girl, — the mother pitiful, tender, 
sad ? but not angry, entreating, offering the 
welcome of her arms, striving to kiss the 
cloud from the brow, yearning to restore, 
forgiveness eager at her tongue's end, gra- 
cious with her most prodigal graciousness, ■ — 
it is then we see her more angelic in her 
motherhood than in any other view we get 
of her. And so, not the one who sees only 
the Divine goodness and sings of it, but the 
Christian, who recognizes in addition the re- 
storing and redeeming spirit of the Most 
High, has the greater reason to sing and 
be glad. 

When you take a guide to make the ascent 
of the mountain, and he is kind and gener- 
ous so long as you keep the right path, you 
have occasion to rejoice, and come to feel 
a love for him by reason of his favors. But 
if you get lost, and fall into the perils of the 



The Song of Mercy and Judgment. 281 

wilderness, and cannot find your way out, 
and the guide comes after you and spends 
the night in searching for you, and gives him- 
self lovingly to the work of your rescue, and 
at last finds you and shares his joy and his 
store with you, and leads you back in safety, 
what is your feeling then? Would you not 
yield him greater attachment still? And 
would you not say: "Let the welkin ring 
with the chorus of acclaim that hails him 
returned in triumph " ? And so can the re- 
deemed sing as none others. So shall mercy 
call forth the hosannas of the heavenly host. 

" I lost myself, and the Lord found me ; I 
erred, and he came bearing me light; I 
sinned, and he saved me : and shall I not 
sing unto him, shall I not celebrate his 
mercy?" Yes, surely I may. 

But now the song according to David : 
"I will sing of mercy and of judgment; " 
that is the w r ay he puts it, — and shall I not 
go with him, and strike the last note as well 
as the first? Shall I not also sing of judg- 
ment, as it comes from the Divine throne and 
falls into the order of the Divine government? 



282 Faith and Righteousness. 

No, if it is not in its nature song-inspiring; 
yes, if it can be made to appear wise and 
good and kind. If judgment is vindictive 
and harsh and magisterial, I cannot sing of 
it, nor be glad in view of it. If it is exacting 
and cold, and put forth as an expression of 
power, and to satisfy in a legal way an out- 
raged majesty, I cannot rejoice over it. If 
God consults only his own glor}", in the 
spirit of haughty exaltation in its conception 
and execution, then my heart can give back 
no note of response that has anything of the 
joy of music in it. If it is judgment in the 
interest of pain and penalty only, bound to 
hold on to its victim throughout eternity, 
then it can inspire no song. If it is cloudy 
and thunderous and repellant, I might be 
hushed to awe, but could not be drawn by 
it into song. If it comes forth from any 
lower source than mercy, a disposition to 
save, and a good-will like that of the good 
physician or surgeon who gives pain only 
to shield against greater pain, I cannot oner 
up a strain in gratitude and praise of it. 
David did not proclaim the purpose set forth 



The Song of Mercy and Judgment. 283 

in the text, in view of a light that was only 
darkness. He did not contemplate any such 
judgment as we often see among men, and 
find ascribed to Deity in the world's theolo- 
gies, that carries vindictive passion and hard- 
ness along its course. Nothing of this kind 
ever brought out a song. 

Could the Puritans, who saw the Divine 
judgment in the light of a hundred years 
ago, sing of it? They could bewail and 
bemoan, in doleful minor, as they did. But 
is that singing of judgment? Will you put 
that alongside the exultant and heart-gushing 
melody of the Psalmist? 

When you come to follow judgment be- 
yond the medicinal and merciful intent, and 
see it laid on, and held on, in the shape of 
piercing, blighting torment, to be without 
end, the powers of song are struck mute. 
We are not strung for joy and the outpour- 
ing of music in view of any such issue. I 
know that some hearts are none too soft, 
and that now and then they show themselves 
to be as nigh at least as sixteenth cousins to 
fiends, and sometimes rejoice to see that they 



284 Faith and Righteousness. 

have caused another pain, and brought some- 
body to grief. But, thanks to our Maker, 
there is a point in this bad direction beyond 
which mankind cannot go ; the hardest heart 
is made to relent. And whoever has grasped 
the full cruelty of judgment carried over, 
past a redeeming ministry, to assume the 
guise of eternal woe, has recoiled and said : 
"7* would not have so carried it." There 
are enough men better than their Deity has 
appeared to them to be. A multitude of 
good men have done a great deal of Divine 
worship through training and custom. But 
not in joy; not in the rapture of song. But, 
rather, in distress and gloom and tears and 
weepings, — all of which is to their credit. 
For who would not disown, and justly, even 
a brother that could be sunny and glad- 
some before such a prospect for any of his 
fellows ? 

But what, in truth, are the Divine judg- 
ments? They are guises that mercy takes 
on ; they are mercy's instrumentality, or 
means, of compassing its end of saving. 
Mercy is not all pity. It does not exhaust 



The Song of Mercy and Judgment. 285 

itself in mere feeling; it would be a poor 
attribute if it did, — a barren sentiment. 
Does medical skill end in compassion for 
the patient? We want our doctor to bring 
a great deal of heart with him when he 
answers the call from our sick-bed ; but we 
want him to bring prescriptions also, and 
such as will be best for us, for the purpose 
of getting us well, even if they be of tenfold 
bitterness. So mercy must carry judgmen- 
tary prerogatives. Otherwise it is not mercy; 
otherwise it is sentimentalism and maudlin 
compassion. 

Of course judgments are only the last re- 
sorts of mercy in the Divine economy; and 
for this they move us all the more with ad- 
miration. They are kept back and held in 
the rear of other influences so long as the 
case will admit. " God does not afflict will- 
ingly, nor grieve the children of men." He 
is slow to punish, His main scheme is not 
penal, but educational. He comes mainly 
with a system of positive influences. He de- 
pends almost wholly upon training us. He 
offers us himself to love and to come into 



286 Faith and Righteousness. 

unity with. He sends that beautiful life of 
Christ to be lived before us and to draw us 
to itself. He secures to us a gospel, to en- 
lighten and inspire. He makes Nature in- 
viting. He enshrines his spirit in all places 
to breathe out love and life. And only as 
all this miscarries and fails, and we are indif- 
ferent still and unwilling, and give no signs 
of right tendencies, but grow more distant, 
does he deal with us in another way, No 
parent lays a hand on a child so reluctantly; 
and for this reason his judgments have even 
a beauty about them. They linger, and would 
not come at all ; but coming, they are tender, 
if emphatic, with the meaning of help. 

How many times have my heart and your 
heart lingered, and our eyes moistened, over 
that passage in John : " For God sent not his 
son into the world to condemn the world, 
but that the world through him might be 
saved." He calls sinners to salvation rather 
than to judgment. He sends Jesus, not to 
berate them and accuse them and preach to 
them hard things, but to make the right way 
plainer and easier and more inviting. Read- 



The Song of Mercy and Judgment. 287 

ing that text, who need fear to come to God ? 
When did he ever push any back, or cast 
reproach upon a home-coming prodigal, or 
put any to shame that had forsaken sin? 
How is the Divine sword kept in the scab- 
bard ! How is love put forth, and fear left 
unawakened ! Christianity is a trial of all 
influences^ that are calculated to lead out 
the better life, and it hushes, just as much 
as possible, the thunders of judgment. The 
Father of us all wants obedience and beauty 
of spirit and the joy of Christian character, 
and not penalty. 

And in this light we can see what penalty, 
when at last resorted to, means. It is for 
our good. The prescription means health 
to our higher life. And of such an adminis- 
tration we can sing and exult. Gladness is 
eminently in place, in view of the rod that 
our Heavenly Father keeps behind his throne 
to serve his purposes of discipline when 
moral and spiritual influences fail to carry 
onward the beneficent work. 

We may well rejoice that there is judg- 
ment in reserve, since it brings up the rear 



288 Faith and Righteousness. 

of mercy and marches under the same ban- 
ner and towards the same end, — to save the 
sinful. It is an occasion of gratitude and 
joy that the sinner shall at last, after entreaty 
has been exhausted and positive influences 
have proved inadequate, be brought up with 
a square turn in the midst of misery, and 
be forced to understand his case and to mend 
his ways. 

Blessed is retribution ! For dark as are its 
wings, its heart is white as an angel's, and 
its hand pulls heavenward ! Blessed be the 
firm hand of the great Musician, that tunes 
us to the heavenly key-note ! It may be that 
with groanings and wailings we shall have 
to be brought up out of our life-jangle and 
discordance, as the loose strings of a violin 
are wrought into harmony ; but the result that 
must be so secured is well worth the cost. 
Holiness is w r orth the price, whatever we may 
pay for it. Heaven is cheap, even if we are 
forced to pay a mint of suffering. But then, 
how much better to come right, and be vir- 
tuous on easier terms ! As God wants us, 
the bargain need not be a hard one. The 



The Song of Mercy and Judgment. 289 

Lord is ready to make easy terms. He says, 
" Ask, and ye shall receive. " He says, " Who- 
ever will, let him come." He scatters flowers 
along the way to lure, and opens countless 
refreshing springs by the roadside, and offers 
cooling shades and mountain views and ten 
thousand joys. And he checks us in our 
wicked wanderings only to turn us upon this 
heavenly way. Oh, let us come into it and 
live ! O ye favored, come into the path that 
is not rough, and the way that is not hard ! 
And then your song, like David's, shall be 
one of triumph : " I will sing of mercy and 
judgment; unto thee, O Lord, will I sing." 
Such is the chorus of the ransomed. 



19 



XII. 

THE FULFILLING PRINCIPLE. 



XII. 



The Fulfilling Principle. 

Love is the fulfilling of the law. — Rom. xiii. 10. 

HE admiration of science is. its method. 
It descends from details to the deep- 
est law of things, and striking that, it 
proceeds to marshal all things in harmony 
with it. When Newton first grasped the 
principle of attraction, he at once proceeded 
to test the scope of its application, — to ex- 
plain by it the rounding of a drop of dew and 
the globing of a w T orld, the curved line of a 
thrown stone and the circular pathway of the 
planets, the balancing of a mote in a sun- 
beam, and the balancing of the sun itself in 
space. And so in all things, science seeks 
the ulterior and universal, demands the low- 
est analysis, and evolves the fixed methods. 




294 Faith and Righteousness. 

I have referred to this method of science 
simply to prepare for the statement that the 
same method is applicable to morals. Here, 
also, we would escape from mere details, and 
enter the deeper region of general principles. 
And so, instead of contemplating the multi- 
tudinous aspects of the surface of morals, and 
dissipating our care upon the leaves of the 
tree of life, we would, if possible, descend to 
the more hidden, but cardinal conditions or 
laws of being and action, the few grand roots 
that feed and supply all above them ; yes, it 
may be we would go down deeper still, and 
find the very trunk-root of all, and foster that 
as the essential thing to a well-developed and 
fruit-bearing life. For, in fact, every life has 
its trunk-root, of one kind or another, that 
determines the character of its unfolding, 
even to its leafing and fruitage. It is the 
root of the upas or of the orange, of the sin- 
ner or of the saint. It is avarice sucking up 
the golden soil and transmuting manhood 
into money instead of money into manhood, 
according to the Divine purpose ; or it is 
sensuality drawing to itself all the carnal poi- 



The Fulfilling Principle. 295 

sons, and brutifying a divine nature, and turn- 
ing life into a depraved revel ; or it is pride 
running all to a gilded surface and a hollow 
display; or the lust of power that sends a 
child of God seeking for a " little brief au- 
thority ; " or the love of fame, " a fancied life 
in others' breath," that turns life into an ig- 
noble chase for a fading wreath. Or, on the 
other hand, the germinal principle is of better 
quality and higher promise. It draws to 
itself health, and mounts into beauty. It 
feeds from the better constituents of the 
universe, and ripens them into being, and 
scatters them forth in blessings. And so 
all life is rooted ; and the domain of morals, 
and, in fact, the formation of character, is re- 
ducible to a few T general principles, — perhaps 
to one central principle, and that is love ; 
for we are told that " Love is the fulfilling 
of the law." 

Let us proceed to test this generalization. 
And I remark, in the first place, that love is 
the fulfilling of the law of development ; or, in 
other words, it is the crown and completion 
of being. Without love life is unfinished, and 



296 Faith and Righteousness. 

character is crude. It matters little what are 
our other excellencies, if we are wanting this. 
For power without love is barren and bleak, 
and too often, as we see in all the unchecked 
tyrants of the ages, lapses into cruelty ; 
while genius devoid of heart and justice, with 
none of the milk of human kindness in it, and 
beauty destitute of the warmth of sympathy, 
are neither highly joyous in themselves, nor 
safely to be intrusted to their own spontaneity. 
We may contemplate them as only filling the 
place of the rose-bush without the rose, or 
as the pretentious monument not carried up to 
its own capstone. For consider who are the 
characters in history, or in the circle of obser- 
vation, that we deem the most perfect. Need 
I say they are not characters noted merely 
for iron wills, or intellectual acumen, or clear 
records, or renowned beauty? For these are 
only the subordinate conditions, or accesso- 
ries, of completed life. It is only where 
these, in conjunction or singly, are crowned 
with love, and subserve benevolent ends, that 
we award the palm for the greatest perfection 
of development. 



The Fulfilling Principle. 297 

And so of a family, its chief grace is its 
love. Merely cold greatness congregated 
beneath a roof, sitting around, if you please, 
like statues of the Muses, — philosophy here, 
art there, music elsewhere, and poetry yon- 
der, and coldly self-centred, — should rather 
have some gorgeous ice-cavern, for fitness and 
harmony, as its retreat, than any structures 
that we call a home. We do not object to 
diversity in fireside developments, — and, in- 
deed, has not Providence signally provided 
for these by the very constitution of the 
home? Its ideal, and so far as realized, its 
actual, is the blending of opposites. There 
should be no Procrustean process, no re- 
pression of normal tendencies, no tyranny of 
uniformity ; but rather, let personalities freely 
unfold, in whatever healthy direction they 
may. If possible, install philosophy, domes- 
ticate art, foster music, and allow poetry. 
Give these their embodiment in the home cir- 
cle. But when you have got all these, and 
whatever else there may be of similar charac- 
ter, you have not got that fairest development 
that constitutes the very genius and perfec- 



298 Faith and Righteousness. 

tion of the home. You have not reached 
that love that fulfils the law of domestic life. 
You miss that affection without which there 
is no home. For gather your conditions of 
convenience and luxury; pile your palaces, 
story upon story, and bid taste garnish, and 
servants keep them ; lay Nature and Science 
under contribution for sweetest aromas ; make 
vestments richer than Solomon's ; invoke cul- 
ture from the schools ; open broad acres into 
parks ; multiply festivities for troops of guests, 
— but remember the whole is a gilded sham 
without love, and the angels would turn from 
it to the humblest cot, if this grace of graces 
but crowns its life ! 

And then observe how imperfect is the 
spirit of a sect until it rises into the possession 
of love. There is something Divine in Faith 
as she stands leaning on the Cross ; and her 
battles have been heroic, and her victories 
over materialism and atheism full of blessings 
for souls. The joys of Faith have been real, 
and the roll of her martyrs is a procession of 
honor. But Faith only looks up and away 
from the humanity in which she stands. And 



The Fulfilling Principle. 299 

then there is Hope clinging to the anchor, 
never fearing for the safety of the great ship 
of the universe or the success of the voyage, 
— Hope with her flushed spirit, her radiant 
face, and her far-off look of expectancy. She, 
too, is of heavenly aspect, and her reign in the 
life of the sect is fair to look at. But the law 
of denominational growth, running through 
the periods of Faith and Hope, culminates 
in the reign of Love, — Love, fairer than her 
fair sisters ; Love with her broad yearnings 
and her gentle toleration; Love with her 
pitiful heart and her cruse of oil ; Love 
with her quick ear, her soft hands, and her 
swift feet; Love, most happy when most 
self-forgetful and self-sacrificing; Love, one 
with God and angels, and " chief among the 
blessed three." When she is overtaken by 
the sect, and made its guest and the inspirer 
of its life, then it touches a perfection that 
it could not before, though its faith were as 
Paul's, and its hope the fulness of assurance. 

And so the divinest aspect of civilization, 
the sweetest grace in that great heart teem- 
ing with distinctions, the whitest flower in its 



300 Faith and Righteousness. 

broad and luxuriant garden, grand with the 
manifold bloom of human nature, shall be the 
spirit of genuine love, making all hearts one, 
and passing the olive-branch of peace through 
all the earth, — love, the antidote of " man's 
inhumanity to man," and the end of wars, 
slaveries, bastiles, oppression, and cruel mo- 
nopolies. Whatever else civilization may 
develop, — whatever of material grandeur, 
whatever of culture, whatever of science and 
art, — nothing shall rank in perfectness the 
final unfolding of the heart. No star shall 
wheel into that firmament of glories with 
such heavenly beauties and holy ministries as 
that of Love ; and her beams shall be shed 
down upon all else, — upon wealth to touch 
it with generosity, upon learning and art, piety 
and social life, to broaden their spirit and aim. 

But if love is the fulfilling of the law of 
development, the completion of being, so, I 
observe in the second place, it is the fulfil- 
ment of the law of service. I am aware that 
Philosophy has professed to touch bottom at 
other points, to evolve morals from other 
centres, to base her expectation of perfect 



The Fulfilling Principle. 301 

obedience on other principles. On the one 
hand, we have had the self-interest scheme 
advocated from high sources. According 
to this, it is selfishness sublimated that is 
going to give us the millennium. Wisely 
consulting our own good, we shall find the 
perfect services the ones to be rendered. 
Self-interest, we are told, broadly viewed, 
is one with the highest and the best. As 
between justice and injustice, charity and 
neglect, piety and profanity, — all perfections 
of a practical kind, and all imperfections, — a 
judicious self-reference, our own best good 
(and this is the supreme motive), is decisive of 
which we should choose. Granted. Granted 
that the perfect service, in ail relations, is the 
best for us, and should be, and, indeed, would 
be the dictate of self-interest broadly consid- 
ered. But then two objections arise, — Can 
this continual self-reference be kept from re- 
turning upon itself and becoming selfishness? 
Will not the gas escape from this sublimated 
and soaring balloon of self-considering mo- 
rality, and cause it to collapse and descend 
from its high course? Ah! this expanded 



302 Faith and Righteousness. 

self-interest, gathering the perfect into its 
ideal and aim, is so liable to be punctured by 
some pressing passion, and return upon itself. 
And then, moreover, it is a mean motive 
when it is the supreme one, even though it 
might fulfil the law of morals at every point ; 
for when all action is considered and pro- 
jected in the light of self; when vision and 
purpose become thus introverted ; when the 
personality becomes the focus of regard; 
when the idea of self-gain becomes regnant ; 
when the man lets out his powers only that, 
like rubber tentacles, they may draw back self- 
enrichment; when giving is based on per- 
sonal calculations, and the dollar must sign 
the bond for its return with interest; when 
duty is balanced in the scale of self-reference, 
and all life is reduced to an equation of loss 
and gain, — then, alas for the grandeur of 
the free, and the glory of the spontaneous ! 

But, on the other hand, there is a genera- 
lization that gives intelligence as the trunk- 
root in the domain of practical life. Accord- 
ing to this, enlightenment is the panacea for 
all moral evils, and the fulfilling of the law 



The Fulfilling Principle. 303 

of justice and mercy. We stumble through 
ignorance, we sin through blindness, and we 
walk erectly and obediently through wisdom. 
The whole question is one of understanding. 
Great is culture ! for our saviors are science 
and art, literature and the schools. So 
Buckle and Spencer, so Mill and Lewes, tell 
us. Of course enlightenment is essential to 
a perfect civilization. This we would not 
deny. But is intellectual culture synony- 
mous with character — I mean Christian 
character? Is learning but another name for 
holiness? is what I ask. Is knowing the sure 
antecedent of doing? Is the seeing eye 
enough? Is vision supreme in the domain 
of life ? To ask is to answer these questions. 
They need no further refutation. 

And so we come back to the text as the 
only adequate generalization, and affirm that 
" Love is the fulfilling of the law " of service 
in all the relations of life. And consider 
how profound and many-sided this principle 
is. See how it breaks into manifold aspects, 
and supplies various motives. Look into the 
human heart, and observe the many forms it 



304 Faith and Righteousness. 

takes on, the evolutions it passes through. 
First, as self-love, it holds a fixed place and 
underlies all action. Then it branches into 
conjugal love, and is that perfect binding 
affection that makes one of heart and heart, 
and that prompts a world of tender minis- 
tries. Now it assumes a parental type, and 
is the fountain of what brooding gladness, 
of what tender patience, of what far-reaching 
hopes, of what educating solicitudes ! Again, 
it is filial in its form, and opens up in rich 
delight and holy trust towards the father and 
mother. Next, as friendship, it entwines 
around congenial souls. Then it broadens 
into a humanitarian sentiment, and includes 
the race in the scope of its interest, and yearns 
in pity and helpfulness towards the most ab- 
ject in ignorance or poverty, and the most 
abandoned in sin, — becomes a ministering 
principle and power, a good angel in the 
earth. And at this point of its development 
as a human instinct it breaks yet once more 
into branching glories and uses, projecting 
itself through the dominant moral nature in 
the form of sympathy with the wronged and 



The Fulfilling Principle. 305 

oppressed, and demanding equity between 
man and man; striking fetters from the en- 
slaved, and teaching " tyrants that they also 
have joints in their necks ; " flowing through 
the religious spirit as a missionary impulse, 
and going forth to bear the Bible and plant 
the Cross in all the islands of the sea; as- 
cending through souls that beat in special 
sympathy with neglected childhood, to shelter 
and bless ; and speeding the merciful to the 
haunts of sorrow and the beds of sickness, 
to comfort and cheer. And, finally, observe 
this principle turning upward in deferential 
regard for the Deity, — becoming the love 
of God and the glow of worship. How 
wonderful the depth, the breadth, the height, 
the diversity, of love ! What branching from 
its fertile root ! What outgoings from its 
divine fulness ! And so, how evident is it 
that the text contains the ultimate analysis 
of motives ! How clear that love, breaking 
into all practical directions, is the fulfilling of 
the lav/ of service ! Enlist the affections, and 
duties become desires ; engage the heart, and 
the fidelities are spontaneous outgoings. 
20 



306 Faith and Righteousness. 

Base manners on any other condition than 
this of kindly regards, so that they shall not 
be heart-manners, and what have you ? Pos- 
sibly fine acting and gilded display towards 
a few, but no broad and general fulfilment of 
the social laws. You have an etiquette that 
is exquisite within a small range, within its 
clique or caste, but that is vulgarity itself on 
the breadth of the world; that reaches its 
dainty fingers forth most gracefully to con- 
tact with the elect, but that makes free of its 
reproachful foot towards the non-elect; that 
has no more of Christ in it, or of divine 
gentility, than a doll has of human life ! 
Only love is equal to good manners, or an 
adequate trunk-root of all this branching and 
leafing and fruitage of the social life. 

And then, as a final illustration, observe how 
love is the only sufficient source of ministries 
to the needy and the erring. No matter how 
liberal these may be on any other basis, they 
are not Christian or ample. Let wealth fill 
the charity-boxes to repletion, and organiza- 
tions send forth their salaried almoners, and 
every case of nakedness and hunger and sick- 



The Fulfilling Principle. 307 

ness receive quick attention, and yet how far 
is this from the ideal philanthropy ! You 
have only the vehicles of charity, without 
charity. You only touch the poor with fin- 
gers of ice. You do not cheer their loneli- 
ness, lift the burden of their solitude, soothe 
the aching of the heart, banish the cloud by 
the glow of a divine presence. Yes, even 
our benefactions must be kindled by love, 
to be perfect, and the almoner's hand must 
be warm and soft by the abundant presence 
of the heart's blood in it. 

Finally, if love is the fulfilling of the law 
of being and of service, so is it of the law 
of influence. Love is the centre of supreme 
power, and the condition of final victory. In 
the strife of sources and the antagonism of 
principles, this shall triumph. In the old 
legend, the giant that had defied strategy, 
and withstood argument, and spurned law, 
and twisted swords as if they were reeds, 
was finally taken captive by the soft hand 
of a child, and changed to docility by the 
mild grace of its heart. And so the hideous 
monster of evil, fearful in all his dark and 



308 Faith and Righteousness. 

depraved guises, shall yield at last to the 
gentle sway of this Divine principle. 

Once, as I was travelling on the upper 
Mississippi, our steamer ran aground, and 
we were delayed several hours before the 
next steamer arrived to draw us back into 
the stream. Meanwhile we were beguiled by 
the romance of the scenery and by the 
music of a flute played by one of the boat- 
hands, with a skill rare for an amateur. But 
the charm never to be forgotten was the 
return of the music from a precipitous cliff 
on the Minnesota shore. But if that rocky 
ruggedness responded music for music, what 
divine answers shall not the hardest human 
heart give at length, when the music of a 
perfect love winds into its living recesses 
and touches its sensitive chords ! 

Ah, yes ! the Love of the universe, undy- 
ing, ever-pursuing, combining more and more, 
is a sure guarantee of redemption, — the soft 
but sovereign hand that shall receive a will- 
ing obedience, and the celestial music that 
shall be echoed with universal accord ! 



XIII. 

RELIGION THE VITAL BOND. 



XIII. 



Religion the Vital TSond, 

That they all may be one ; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, 
that they also may be one in us. — John xvii. 21. 

HAVE selected this text as affording 
a fitting introduction to a brief dis- 
cussion of the generic nature or es- 
sential element of religion. There have been, 
and still are, a great many systems of faith 
and practice in the world ; but in all these, 
whether ancient or modern, there is some- 
thing that entitles them to be called religions. 
They may be pagan or Christian, visionary 
or logical, crude or refined ; still they share 
in common a principle or a posture that is 
religious, that removes them from the cate- 
gory of the secular into the circle of the 
sacred ; and the inquiry which I now pro- 




3 1 2 Faith and Righteousness. 

pose is, to analyze and set forth that central 
or distinguishing element. 

Taking the word " religion " and analyzing 
it, we find at its root the signification of a 
bond. It is from re and ligo ; and ligo means 
" to tie," " to bind," " to unite." Our common 
word " ligament " is from the same source, and 
suggests the central fact of religion, which is 
a bond, an attachment, a ligature, so to speak, 
and an organic alliance; and the two factors 
are God and the soul, — the great object of 
thought and feeling, of love or fear, or wor- 
ship and obedience, the higher presence and 
hidden ideal, and the spirit of man. Wher- 
ever we find an upward reference of this 
kind, linking the devotee to Deity, no matter 
what aspects that Deity may assume, or 
what name he may bear, — Brahma, Jehovah, 
Great Spirit, or Father, — there we find the 
distinguishing principle and posture of all 
religion, its primal and inmost feature in all 
times and ages. It is vital contact and one- 
ness, from below upward. It is an upward ref- 
erence, viewed either from a pagan or Christian 
point of view; the terrible regard, it may 



Religion the Vital Bond. 313 

chance, of superstition, blighted with fear 
and consummated in servility, or the wor- 
ship of love that blooms in trust and ripens 
in the joy of communion; the deference 
that, impelling to sacrifice, finds its awful 
expression in the crushing car of Juggernaut, 
or the kindling pile of sacrifice ; or that, in- 
spiring to service, is revealed in a worship 
that is the vestibule to noblest work, — the 
unity, in a word, that, as it is found in pagan- 
ism or in Christianity, involves a low or a 
high plane of being and bond of relationship. 
And it is this last and highest unity with 
God through Christ that my text both asserts 
and craves : " That they all may be one ; as 
thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that 
they also may be one in us." 

For, looking all through the career of Jesus, 
his oneness with God is the patent fact. The 
bond is perfect and constant. The gracious 
link is never sundered. The tie holds wher- 
ever he stands, and through all his course. 
Now it gleams in the moment of joy, and now, 
like a living ray, it shines in the night of suf- 
fering. Through the beauty of the flower his 



314 Faith and Righteousness. 

heart penetrates and unites with the Divine ; 
beyond the sparrow, flitting across the blue 
sky, he sees the background of a Universal 
Providence; the grass reflects a present good- 
ness; the wind is vocal with the breath of 
the Spirit; the auroral morning and radiant 
evening are " opening vistas " to the Divine 
Presence. Everywhere there is life and love, 
and the universe is but a vast tabernacle in 
which he stands face to face and heart to 
heart with the invisible Shekinah. 

And it was this constant and exalted unity 
that constituted the religiousness of Christ. 
This made him. Through it came his wis- 
dom, interpreting truth so clearly, — his love, 
comprehensive as that of God, gilding the 
whole race; his hope, outreaching the dura- 
tion of sin, and claiming a future of universal 
obedience; his courage, that nothing could 
daunt, and his integrity, that nothing could 
bend. 

Religion, then, is the tying of the soul to 
God through faith and feeling. For where 
you find man, there you find the putting forth 
of the soul. On the lowest plane, it is but a 



Religion the Vital Bond. 315 

blind groping for an object to grasp; on its 
highest, it is a Christian recognition of and 
fellowship with the Father. Its true end is 
conjunction and communion with the Perfect. 
Everywhere it is an upward tendency and a 
bond, a living link; but in Christ it is a unity 
with the God of all perfections. 

In the light of this definition of religion we 
have clearly suggested, on the one hand, the 
greatness of human nature. We see that the 
temporal and the earthly cannot satisfy it. 
Out of its rich depths springs into life an 
earnest for the hidden and the enduring, — 
yea, and for the perfect. For all the way 
along, not only has the Scriptural bond ex- 
isted, but it has been ever transferable from 
the lower to the higher, — thus reflecting its 
real capacity and its far-off destiny, as in the 
first feeble flutterings of the young eagle on 
the rim of its nest, and the short flights that 
follow 7 , we discern the proud voyager of the 
upper air and the master of the boundless 
space. How signally does the soul disengage 
itself from the dust ! How soon it seeks 
to ally itself with a higher principle and a 



31 6 Faith and Righteousness. 

diviner element ! How inevitably it manifests 
its spiritual nature by striving to bind itself to 
the unseen and spiritual ! How clearly we 
may interpret its superiority to the earthy in 
its first gropings for divinity ! For even fetich- 
worship proclaims the dignity of the soul, 
and idolatry, grasping higher personalities, 
claiming its retinue of gods, shows the pro- 
gressive tendency of this inner life ; while the 
acceptance of the perfect Father, revealed by 
Jesus, decides its true goal. If we are only 
dust, wherefore this reaching forth and yearn- 
ing for the spiritual? If we are simply mat- 
ter, why do we court a bond with spirit? If 
our level is with the earth, why do we toil so 
instinctively to disengage ourselves from it, 
and contact with the hidden and the highest? 
I cast these inquiries at the feet of the atheist, 
and ask him what possible solution they can 
have, save in the fact of the spiritual essence 
and immortal capacities of the soul? 

But, on the other hand, in the light of our 
definition of religion as a vital bond we can 
comprehend its power. On all sides we see 
the efficiency of living ties. We mark them 



Religion the Vital Bond. 317 

as channels of influence and avenues of en- 
ergy. Along them course the tides of inspi- 
ration and flow the motives that actuate and 
govern life. Wherever the heart is implicated 
and held by the cohesion of its loves, thence 
it draws the essence of its character and de- 
rives the incentives of its action. That to 
which it is vitally linked becomes its sovereign. 
How potent is any great hope over us if we 
yield to the spell of its influence; that is, if 
we become one with it ! Bind the heart to 
beauty by the aesthetic tie, and a new life 
dawns within it, an enchantment and glory. 
How sure are the reciprocal impressions and 
conferments of friendship, blighting or bless- 
ing, constituting an interchange of evil or of 
good, a reciprocity of the debasing or of the 
angelic, according as the living tie runs low 
or high ! How inevitably will sensuality surge 
up into the life, like a bleak and turbid tide, 
where the end of desire is indulgence ! What 
direful infatuation lies in this lust of excess, 
bending every noble power of mind and heart 
to the fatal spell, enslaving imperial genius, 
blasting divinest affections, saddening the 



318 Faith and Righteousness. 

most regal conscience, and trailing the loftiest 
ambitions in the mire of pollution, — in a 
word, brutifying the image of God ! Behold 
the victims of this bond, — men in the midst of 
their years, young men, and fair women sac- 
rificing all that is worth living for through the 
misplaced allegiance ! On the other hand, 
how surely will nobler characteristics fill the 
being, and better promptings direct the en- 
ergies, if human nature be linked by living 
ligatures to " the True, the Beautiful, and the 
Good." In a word, our bonds explain us. 
They command our purposes and lead forth 
our activities. And in this we find the power 
of religion, of the soul's upward reference. 

For we shall see, if we look through history, 
that the most effective of all inspirations, and 
the grandest of triumphs of every kind, have 
really been the outgrowths of a divine alle- 
giance. Go stand by the solemn pyramids, 
towering far upward ; go learn the secret of 
the ancient wars; find the root of the old 
mythologies ; mark the spirit that excavated 
the catacombs and projected the Crusades, 
that built the columns and sprung the arches 



Religion the Vital Bond. 319 

of St. Peter's and all the old cathedrals, that 
colonized Plymouth Rock, and that carries 
the civilization of Christendom to the far-off 
places of the earth ; penetrate to the very 
centres of life, and trace the springs of action 
in all the world, and you shall find that reli- 
gion has been and is the animating impulse. 
For God, men have been brave, self-forgetful, 
and mighty. A divine faith and love explain 
the heroes and martyrs who have swayed the 
currents of history, and piled the stepping- 
stones, and planted far up the standards of 
progress. 

Yes, the spiritual bond is potent over you 
and me ; for how much is God in our thoughts 
and hearts, and what activities and joys are 
called forth by this upward reference ! It 
draws us to our temples, it prompts gra- 
titude, promotes charity, begets trust, and 
spans the tomb with the bow of hope. Our 
unity with the Father through Christ is both 
our strength and our comfort, giving us a 
heaven to-day, a new earth and a new life, 
and a heaven " beyond the river," where 
the parted meet, and where the poor are 



320 Faith and Righteousness. 

rich, and the bond are free, and the crushed 
arise and advance. 

But observe, once more, how our definition 
of religion as a spiritual bond affords us a 
ready and sure test of what is religious and 
what is not. We need no longer mistake in 
this direction. We have only to search for 
the vital link tying the soul to God, and 
wheresoever that is found, there is religion ; 
and wheresoever it is not found, there reli- 
gion is not, whatever sacred names we apply, 
or pious signatures affix. 

And so it is clear that a mere belief about 
God is not religion, for it does not unite to 
him. It may be a logical statement, but the 
living sentiment does not run through it. 
The spirit of the statement is not reached, 
as a theory of beauty may be held apart 
from a sense of beauty. Alas, how much 
dead theology has there been, what empty 
creeds and barren abstractions, in which 
souls have been buried like the bodies of 
old kings in their stony sarcophagi ! Yea, 
it is the living bond of faith we need. It is 
the belief that fastens us to the Infinite Spirit 



Religion the Vital Bond. 321 

that is religious, and none other is entitled 
to the name ; for better are two words that 
lead up to the Divine and effect an alliance 
with it, that involve a rich experience and 
induce life, than thirty-nine articles, or three 
hundred, learnedly formulated, that never 
bear the soul above the dust and din of dog- 
matic controversy. 

And as with theory, so with ceremony. 
It is not necessarily religious, — in fact it is 
so only when it constitutes a via sacra, an 
access, a bond for the spirit, and not when 
it interposes as an end. It is only a medium 
of access to the spirit when it is subordinate 
and subservient to the deeper sensibilities of 
the soul. Beginning and ending in itself, as 
it often does, it is no more religious than 
any secular act, since there is in it no tie 
or bond with what is above and beyond. 
It has no spiritual significance. The sacred 
symbolry is void of a sacred office. As the 
glass in our windows may be looked at or 
looked through, and so become media to 
the sky and the far-stretching landscape, so 
may a ceremonial begin and end in itself, — 
21 



322 Faith and Righteousness. 

in which case it is not religious ; or it may be 
an avenue for the passing and re-passing of 
the very spirit and substance of life, — in 
which case it becomes religious. 

And just here, moreover, with our easy 
test in hand, we are able to discriminate 
between a religious and an unreligious mo- 
rality. Morals may be purely atheistic ; and 
yet as such I would not call them " filthy 
rags." They may be conceived and carried 
out, not as a law of God invested with Divine 
functions, and as obeyed with an upward 
reference, but as a law of Nature, or, if you 
please, as an ordinance of man, the best wis- 
dom of the time, — in which case obedience 
will be the result of a mere loyality to mo- 
rality for its own sake. In this case morals 
are not religious ; but far be it from me to 
say they are ignoble. I indulge in no cheap 
cant of depreciation. They are grand, even 
if atheistic, and the souls are worthy that 
bring them forth independent of any consid- 
erations of God. But when, on the contrary, 
they are viewed in the light of Deity, and 
executed in the love of him ; when they are 



Religion the Vital Bond. 323 

exalted into Divine relations and given a 
spiritual dignity, and conscience is seconded 
by faith, — then are they religious, and stand 
doubly secure. Then duty is not merely 
secular, it is sacred ; and lower and higher 
motives are combined in its discharge, — just 
as the noble boy who goes forth from his 
home may stand true and upright at every 
post, at once for duty's sake and for the sake 
of the father and the mother whose coun- 
sels linger in his memory and whose love 
throbs in his heart, and for the sake of his 
Maker whom he adores, and whose claims 
he recognizes in all duty. " Mother/' wrote 
back a brave youth from the front at Gettys- 
burg, " Mother, not only because I love my 
country, but because I love you, I will be 
a faithful soldier ! " And had he also added, 
" Because I love the God of nations," the 
circle of motives would have been complete. 
When we link morality thus to God, we ren- 
der it religious, fulfilling it with the energy 
of faith and the ardor of love. It becomes 
an infinite reality, — not a caprice out of the 
earth, but a law written on the sky and last- 



324 Faith and Righteousness. 

ing as eternity. It is the majestic thought 
and will of the Most High ! It is one in 
all the universe, and appeals alike to man 
and angels. And so morality becomes a 
part of religion when thus given an upward 
reference; and as its aspect thus broadens, 
so are its behests the more emphatic, and its 
dictates sublime. 

And let us remark, in conclusion, that if 
religion exalts and supports morals, so may 
it glorify and transfigure all things; that is, 
like Jesus in Judaea, we may find higher mean- 
ings in every aspect of Nature, and sanctify 
every experience of joy or sorrow, of life or 
death, by bearing it into the Divine atmo- 
sphere. All work, even, may be set in some 
shape of alliance with Providence, and thus be- 
come an offering of love, and be touched with 
something of the sanctity of religion. Thus 
Paul may plant, and Apollos water, with some 
sense of the Deity that insures the increase 
through sunshine and air and the mystery 
of growth. The mechanic may apply his 
arts with some reverent consideration for the 
Great Source of the materials he uses and 



Religion the Vital Bond. 325 

the laws he everywhere meets. The poet 
may sing, the scholar think, the prince wear 
his crown, not without a sense of dependence 
and a spirit of gratitude, — in which case a 
spiritual light shines through their toil, and 
life will be all the fresher and nobler for 
touching the Life that inspires. 

Let us, then, seek that affiliation with the 
Divine, that tie of faith and bond of love, 
that was so perfect in Jesus, and filled him 
with such purity, peace and pow r er, patience 
and courage ; that has been so conspicuous 
in the great lives of all the past, and largely 
made them what they were; which is so 
normal to our being, so friendly to our best 
life, and so fostering of that hope that flies 
forward to the perfect and the eternal ! 




University Press : John Wilson & Son, Cambridg-e. 



